My Name is Lucy Barton

A #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERLONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE & THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTIONAs seen on BBC2 Between the CoversAn exquisite story of mothers and daughters from the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Olive KitteridgeLucy is recovering from an operation in a New York hospital when she wakes to find her estranged mother sitting by her bed. They have not seen one another in years. As they talk Lucy finds herself recalling her troubled rural childhood and how it was she eventually arrived in the big city got married and had children. But this unexpected visit leaves her doubting the life she's made wondering what is lost and what has yet to be found.The story continues in Oh William! available to read now!*****'A terrific writer' Zadie Smith'A superbly gifted storyteller and a craftswoman in a league of her own' Hilary Mantel'So good it gave me goosebumps. One of the best writers in America' Sunday Times|A heart-wrenching story of mothers and daughters from the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge|I am deeply impressed. Writing of this quality comes from a commitment to listening from a perfect attunement to the human condition from an attention to reality so exact that it goes beyond a skill and becomes a virtue. I have never read her before and I knew within a few sentences that here was an artist to value and respect|Strout's best novel yet|An exquisite novel... in its careful words and vibrating silences My Name Is Lucy Barton offers us a rare wealth of emotion from darkest suffering to - 'I was so happy. Oh I was happy' - simple joy|So good I got goosebumps... a masterly novel of family ties by one of America's finest writers|My Name is Lucy Barton confirms Strout as a powerful storyteller immersed in the nuances of human relationships... Deeply affecting novel...visceral and heartbreaking...If she hadn't already won the Pulitzer for Olive Kitteridge this new novel would surely be a contender|Hypnotic...yielding a glut of profoundly human truths to do with flight memory and longing|This is a book you'll want to return to again and again and again|Slim and spectacular...My Name Is Lucy Barton is smart and cagey in every way. It starts with the clean solid structure and narrative distance of a fairy tale yet becomes more intimate and improvisational coming close at times to the rawness of autofiction by writers such as Karl Ove Knausgaard and Rachel Cusk. Strout is playing with form here with ways to get at a story yet nothing is tentative or haphazard. She is in supreme and magnificent command of this novel at all times....|My Name Is Lucy Barton is a short novel about love particularly the complicated love between mothers and daughters... It evokes these connections in a style so spare so pure and so profound the book almost seems to be a kind of scripture or sutra if a very down-to-earth and unpretentious one|Her concise writing is a masterclass in deceptive simplicity...Strout writes with an exacting rhythm with each word and clause perfectly placed and weighted and each sentence as clear and bracing as grapefruit. It's a small masterpiece|This short simple quiet novel wriggles its way right into your heart and stays there|A beautifully taut novel|Agleam with extraordinary psychological insights...delicate tender but ruthless reveries|An eerie compelling novel its deceptively simple language is a 'slight rush of words' which hold much more than they seem capable of containing...This novel is about the need to create a story we can live with when the real story cannot be told...|Strout uses a different voice herself in this novel: a spare simple one elegiac in tone that sometimes brings to mind Joan Didion's|This is a glorious novel deft tender and true. Read it|An exquisitely written story...a brutally honest absorbing and emotive read|Honest intimate and ultimately unforgettable|Sympathetic subtle and sometimes shocking|Plain and beautiful...Strout writes with an extraordinary tenderness and restraint|One of this year's best novels: an intense beautiful book about a mother and a daughter and the difficulty and ambivalence of family life|Elizabeth Strout's prose is like words doing jazz|Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge is the best novel I've read for some time|An exquisite novel of careful words and vibrating silences|In this quiet well observed novel a mother and her mysteriously ill daughter rebuild their relationship in a New York hospital room. Deft and tender it lingers in the mind|A worthy follow-up to Olive Kitteridge|I loved My Name is Lucy Barton: she gets better with each book|The standout novel of the year - a visceral account of the relations between mother and daughter and the unreliability of memory|In a brilliant year for fiction I've admired the nuanced restraint of Elizabeth Strout's My Name is Lucy Barton|Elizabeth Strout's My Name is Lucy Barton shouldn't work but its frail texture was a triumph of tenderness and sent me back to her excellent Olive Kitteridge|A rich account of a relationship between mother and daughter the frailty of memory and the power of healing|This physically slight book packs an unexpected emotional punch|A novel offering more hope|My Name Is Lucy Barton intrigues and pierces with its evocative skin-peeling back remembrances of growing up dirt-poor.|Masterly|A #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERLONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE & THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTIONAn exquisite story of mothers and daughters from the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Olive KitteridgeLucy is recovering from an operation in a New York hospital when she wakes to find her estranged mother sitting by her bed. They have not seen one another in years. As they talk Lucy finds herself recalling her troubled rural childhood and how it was she eventually arrived in the big city got married and had children. But this unexpected visit leaves her doubting the life she's made: wondering what is lost and what has yet to be found.The story continues in Anything is Possible Oh William! and Lucy by the Sea available to read now!*****'A terrific writer' Zadie Smith'A superbly gifted storyteller and a craftswoman in a league of her own' Hilary Mantel'So good it gave me goosebumps. One of the best writers in America' Sunday Times