My Name Is Lucy Barton

A heart-wrenching story of mothers and daughters from the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Olive KitteridgeA mother comes to visit her daughter in hospital after having not seen her in many years. Her unexpected visit forces Lucy to confront her past, uncovering long-buried memories of a profoundly impoverished childhood; and her present, as the fa ade of her new life in New York begins to crumble, awakening her to the reality of her faltering marriage and her unsteady journey towards becoming a writer.From Lucy's hospital bed, we are drawn ever more deeply into the emotional complexity of family life, the inescapable power of the past, and the memories - however painful - that bind a family together.

“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”

A heart-wrenching story of mothers and daughters from the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge Publisher's description
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 -- Hilary Mantel
Strout's best novel yet -- Ann Patchett
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 -- Claire Messud, New York Times Book Review
So good I got goosebumps... a masterly novel of family ties by one of America's finest writers Sunday Times
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 Observer
Hypnotic...yielding a glut of profoundly human truths to do with flight, memory and longing Mail on Sunday
This is a book you'll want to return to again and again and again Irish Independent
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.... Washington Post
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 Newsday
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 Daily Mail
This short, simple, quiet novel wriggles its way right into your heart and stays there Red
A beautifully taut novel Guardian
Agleam with extraordinary psychological insights...delicate, tender but ruthless reveries Sunday Express
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... Financial Times
Strout uses a different voice herself in this novel: a spare simple one, elegiac in tone that sometimes brings to mind Joan Didion's The Tablet
This is a glorious novel, deft, tender and true. Read it Sunday Telegraph
An exquisitely written story...a brutally honest, absorbing and emotive read Catholic Universe
Honest, intimate and ultimately unforgettable Stylist
Sympathetic, subtle and sometimes shocking -- Emma Healey
Plain and beautiful...Strout writes with an extraordinary tenderness and restraint -- Kate Summerscale
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 -- Marcel Theroux
Elizabeth Strout's prose is like words doing jazz -- Rachel Joyce
Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge is the best novel I've read for some time -- David Nicholls
An exquisite novel of careful words and vibrating silences New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books of 2016
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 Daily Telegraph Books of the Year
A worthy follow-up to Olive Kitteridge -- David Nicholls Guardian Books of the Year
I loved My Name is Lucy Barton: she gets better with each book -- Maggie O'Farrell Guardian Books of the Year
The standout novel of the year - a visceral account of the relations between mother and daughter and the unreliability of memory -- Linda Grant Guardian Books of the Year
In a brilliant year for fiction, I've admired the nuanced restraint of Elizabeth Strout's My Name is Lucy Barton -- Hilary Mantel Guardian Books of the Year
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 -- Cressida Connolly The Spectator
A rich account of a relationship between mother and daughter, the frailty of memory and the power of healing -- Mark Damazer New Statesman
This physically slight book packs an unexpected emotional punch -- Simon Heffer Daily Telegraph
A novel offering more hope -- Daisy Goodwin Daily Mail
My Name Is Lucy Barton intrigues and pierces with its evocative, skin-peeling back remembrances of growing up dirt-poor. -- Ann Treneman The Times
Masterly -- Anna Murphy

Elizabeth Strout is the Pulitzer prize-winning author of My Name is Lucy Barton, Anything is Possible, Oh William!, Amy and Isabelle, Abide With Me, The Burgess Boys, Olive Kitteridge, and Olive, Again. She has been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the International Dublin Literary Award, the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize. She lives in Maine.

'Masterly. Fierce, urgent, clear. So good it gave me goosebumps. One of the best writers in America' Sunday Times Lucy 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. 'Deeply affecting, heartbreaking. A powerful storyteller immersed in the nuances of human relationships, weaving family tapestries with compassion, wisdom and insight' Observer 'Hypnotic, yielding a glut of human truths to do with flight, memory and longing' Mail on Sunday 'Tender, elegiac, this is the story of a single life that also manages to tell the story of many' Independent 'Beautifully taut, so compelling' Guardian

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