My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

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.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

In my quest to read a really good book, I headed to the list of Pulitzer Prize winning fiction.  I had heard of Olive Kitteridge so I thought I would give it a try.  It's set in Maine about a Mainer so that's a huge plus for me.  Love Maine!

Olive is a math teacher, married to Henry.  They have one son, Christopher.  Olive is a large woman, she wears size 10 shoes.  And she's not a warm or friendly person, short on words and quick to judge others, but not mean or unkind. She's trying to figure out why others can't see the world the way she does, since hers is the right and only way.  We follow Olive through a large cast of characters in the town of Crosby, Maine, who seamlessly float in and out of her life.

After I've read a book and before I write a review, I usually search the Internet to see what others have said about the book.  News to me was that Olive Kitterridge is considered a collection of 13 short stories.  As I mentioned, many of the chapters told stories of other people in town, the clerk who worked in Henry's pharmacy, the alcoholic piano player at the local tavern, or Jim O'Casey, a fellow teacher who Olive considered having an affair with.  Olive threaded through each story so that I didn't see them as separate and distinct.  Although sometimes I felt the segways were disconnected, I always felt that the lives of the others, developed Olive's character more deeply.  People come in and out of our lives, sometimes staying for years, but most often for only a fleeting moment. The book gave me as a reader, the sensation of life as it happened all around her. 

Olive Kitteridge is beautifully written.  Olive is not a really likeable person, yet I couldn't help liking her.  Her feet were planted firmly on the ground, yet sometimes they weren't.  She was real and I followed her around town as if I were doing my daily errands.  And I loved the feeling I got from reading Olive Kitteridge.