Amazon.com.au:Customer reviews: My Name Is Lucy Barton

Top positive review

A good read

Reviewed in Australia on 15 June 2020

I love all of her books, however this one I found a little less interesting than the 'Olive' books. But that is only my personal thoughts. Still beautifully written and enjoyable.

Top critical review

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Sally Forest

Inner Pain

Reviewed in Australia on 4 April 2017

I wonder if every woman would feel the agony of loss and sense of personal failure that is revealed by the narrator, Lucy Barton. There is no story as such; events in her life are mainly only hinted at or mentioned incidentally. Lucy Barton explores her memories of growing up, tries to confirm them or learn more from others, and tries to determine what damage she has suffered. Increasingly aware of her own dysfunction, she realises how much she has hurt her daughters by her actions.

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From Australia

A Chapman

Disappointing

Reviewed in Australia on 18 November 2016

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This is an unconnected account of mainly people. Very disappointing.

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Kate d

No substance

Reviewed in Australia on 26 December 2016

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I didn't find any substance to this book, everything had to be guessed at and it went nowhere. I did not like any of the characters.

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Trish Griffin

Two Stars

Reviewed in Australia on 6 September 2017

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Nothing happened...

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Amazon Customer

Closely observed Beautifully written

Reviewed in Australia on 2 November 2016

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Closely observed
Beautifully written

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GAYLE

Three Stars

Reviewed in Australia on 9 March 2017

An easy read

Reviewed in Australia on 13 April 2016

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Very interesting and thought provoking

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‘There was a time, and it was many years ago now, ...

Reviewed in Australia on 24 June 2022

... when I had to stay in a hospital for almost nine weeks.’

After I read ‘Oh William!’ some time ago, I had to go back to the beginning, to learn more about Lucy Barton. It is a short novel, but I read it slowly, trying to absorb Lucy’s world and context. So here in the 1980s is Lucy, in hospital in New York City. Complications after surgery have enforced a nine-week hospitalisation on Lucy, a time when her body is restricted but her mind is not.

Lucy’s mother visits, spends five days with Lucy in her hospital room. Lucy has not spoken with her mother for many years. Lucy thinks she has left behind her impoverished childhood in Amgash, Illinois, but the past can never really be escaped, can it? So, what do Lucy and her mother do, during this period of togetherness? Do they talk about the past? Do they resolve any of the issues Lucy has carried with her? Right now, Lucy is at a crossroads. She has escaped Amgash for New York, she is pursuing her dream to be a writer. Although Lucy’s marriage is faltering, she loves her two daughters. But the past is there, her mother’s presence both a comfort and a constant reminder of discomfort.

I finished this novel full of admiration for the way in which Ms Strout builds Lucy’s contemplative world and invites the reader to think (alongside Lucy) about ambition, loneliness, and relationships.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

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Kiwiflora

For me, not sure why this is Man Booker long listed

Reviewed in Australia on 9 December 2016

What a strange little book. Somehow it was longlisted for this year's Man Booker prize, I am no expert, but to me, it just didn't have the wow factor that so many other nominees have. I don't really think it gave anything new or novel or stunningly different that would make it stand out. For a start it revolves around the well worn and trodden theme of mother-daughter relationships, moving around each other like a couple of tigers to arrive at a dubious companionable middle ground.

Narrated in both the present and past - the mid 1980s - Lucy is reflecting on a time when she was in hospital for nine weeks following complications from an appendectomy. At the time she was married to William, the mother of two young daughters, a daughter herself, a sister and a successful writer. This forced rest has given plenty of time for her brain to begin the process of life reflection. She is bored, missing her husband, missing her girls, wondering who is looking after them, if they are missing her. She wakes one afternoon to find her mother, whom she has not seen for many years, sitting in her room. For the next five days and nights, her mother is almost always there, and so they begin to talk, and Lucy begins to think about her early life, her father, her siblings. And yet I don't recall learning why Lucy has been estranged from her mother.

Without going into too much detail, her childhood and early family life was not nice. Her parents were dirt poor, exhausted, broke and tired. There was little attention, love, engagement for the children. Lucy managed to rise above all this, discovering the library at school, and make a good life for herself, which could well be the source of the breakdown in communication with her mother and her family. But during the five days in hospital, both mother and daughter revert to those roles with pet names, gentle discipline, letting the barriers down. In that small room they both work hard at repairing the damaged bond between them. But then after Lucy comes out of hospital, it is another nine years before she sees her mother again, and you wonder why. For Lucy it was easier not to. Which seems weird.

The novel is certainly beautifully written, empathetic and poignant, but there is so much missing from the story and from the characters themselves. Things are glossed over, hinted at, the surface barely touched. It is not a large book and the focus is mostly on what is taking place with Lucy and her mother, so maybe there isn't room to expand too much on these sub plots. For me, this book was simply ok.

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The Short of It - Laura Brading

An unassuming and beautiful novel that will break your heart. Elizabeth Strout is a master.

Reviewed in Australia on 28 June 2017

I adored this tiny, depressing, beautiful book. Another mother-daughter story (I detect a theme here) about a woman, Lucy Barton, who lays in hospital for nine weeks with an undiagnosed illness. Her estranged mother comes to visit her for five days and Lucy, now a successful writer, reflects on her childhood in small-town Illinois and the fraught relationships she shared with her parents and siblings. The recollections aren’t overly vivid and only quietly describe the abuse, poverty and coldness, both literal and metaphorical, that defined this time (although there is one rather graphic scene involving a truck and a snake that is the stuff of nightmares and will stay with me for a long while yet). Tension is built in such a passive way. It feels like a quiet conversation in a private corner with an old friend, or even yourself, although Lucy’s plight is not everyone’s. At the heart of this book she is simply a child questioning whether her mother ever loved her and it absolutely broke my heart. Excited to get broken-hearted all over again and read Strout’s new book, Anything is Possible, which features characters from this one.

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From other countries

Beautifully written, understated novel of fractured relationships

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 February 2019

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Ill in a New York hospital in the mid-1980s, without her husband or her two small daughters, writer Lucy Barton is surprised one day to find her mother has flown in from the Mid-West and is sitting by her bedside. The two haven't spoken in several years, but despite their long period of non-contact, they cautiously reconnect as Lucy drifts in out of consciousness. Lucy's mother's refusal to leave her daughter's bedside suggests maternal devotion - but Lucy's memories of her childhood paint a different picture, a picture of chaotic poverty and erratic, sometimes abusive parenting. Lucy is now a successful writer but back then 'We were oddities,' she says, and the loneliness that resulted is almost palpable: 'In the middle of the cornfields stood one tree, and its starkness was striking. For many years I thought that tree was my friend; it was my friend.'

My Name Is Lucy Barton is a short, sparse novel and every word, every incident related is carefully chosen. There's a veil of ambiguity over the whole novel that made me constantly question what I was reading. It's clear that Lucy's mother, Lydia, remembers certain things very differently to the way Lucy does. Was Lucy's childhood really as bad as she believes it to have been, or - as someone who tells stories for a living - is she creating an embellished narrative to express some other, even deeper problem? There's an extra layer of uncertainty, too, as Lucy is looking back on her hospital stay and relating her conversations with her mother to us at a much later date, long after the two children she worries about while in hospital have grown up. We're not just relying on memories: we're relying on memories of memories. What, exactly, are the vague, undiagnosed complications she's suffering after her appendectomy - and is it just a coincidence that, having spent her childhood wary of a volatile, disturbed father, she is almost obsessively attached to the kind, calm and paternal doctor who oversees her care? Lucy may have left behind her traumatic past for New York, comfortable affluence and literary acclaim, but she'll never be able to escape her family's influence completely, and her relationship with her own daughters seems far from clear-cut.

It's not often that a novel says so much in so few words. Strout's prose is beautifully economical and Lucy's recollections are shaped by her traumatic experiences, some of which she is clearly repressing, so what's left out is sometimes just as important as what's included. This is a thoughtful exploration of fractured, complicated family relationships and the ripple effect of childhood poverty and neglect through the generations.

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