My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
We meet Lucy Barton as she lies in a hospital bed in New York City. She will remain there for nine long weeks, though the cause of her illness remains a mystery. While she's in the hospital, her mother comes to visit for five days. She never leaves Lucy's side and never sleeps. They discuss people they knew over the years and this is how we learn who Lucy Barton really is.
Lucy grew up dirt poor, her family living on the fringes of their rural Illinois community. Her husband had sent her mother the airplane ticket. She had never been on an airplane before and Lucy hadn't seen her in many years. They talk about the past and look out at the Chrysler Building. Every now and then the doctor checks on her and periodically some nurses who she's given nicknames to, come to take her temperature.
The story is peppered with some talk of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980's, the decade in which we first meet Lucy Barton. First we go back to her childhood when her father locks her in his truck with a brown snake of which she's terrified. Her brother grows into a man yet is still reading Little House on the Prairie books. The reader is never given any explanation for why theses event are important. We see snippets of Lucy's marriage and her children. Then we skip to her quest to become a writer after her illness. And when her mother goes home, her life moves on.
I loved Olive Kitterridge but I just couldn't wrap my head around Lucy Barton. I got more out of the advice she received from another writer, than I got from reading her story. I just couldn't find much about Lucy to like, I found her kind of blah. With that being said, Olive Kitteridge wasn't a likable character either but she was tough, funny and feisty. And it's not to say, My Name is Lucy Barton is not a well written novel, but Lucy couldn't grab my attention.
We meet Lucy Barton as she lies in a hospital bed in New York City. She will remain there for nine long weeks, though the cause of her illness remains a mystery. While she's in the hospital, her mother comes to visit for five days. She never leaves Lucy's side and never sleeps. They discuss people they knew over the years and this is how we learn who Lucy Barton really is.
Lucy grew up dirt poor, her family living on the fringes of their rural Illinois community. Her husband had sent her mother the airplane ticket. She had never been on an airplane before and Lucy hadn't seen her in many years. They talk about the past and look out at the Chrysler Building. Every now and then the doctor checks on her and periodically some nurses who she's given nicknames to, come to take her temperature.
The story is peppered with some talk of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980's, the decade in which we first meet Lucy Barton. First we go back to her childhood when her father locks her in his truck with a brown snake of which she's terrified. Her brother grows into a man yet is still reading Little House on the Prairie books. The reader is never given any explanation for why theses event are important. We see snippets of Lucy's marriage and her children. Then we skip to her quest to become a writer after her illness. And when her mother goes home, her life moves on.
I loved Olive Kitterridge but I just couldn't wrap my head around Lucy Barton. I got more out of the advice she received from another writer, than I got from reading her story. I just couldn't find much about Lucy to like, I found her kind of blah. With that being said, Olive Kitteridge wasn't a likable character either but she was tough, funny and feisty. And it's not to say, My Name is Lucy Barton is not a well written novel, but Lucy couldn't grab my attention.
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