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.

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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

Sally Forest

Inner Pain

Reviewed in Australia on 4 April 2017

Reviewed in Australia on 2 November 2016

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This was a strange book and required an amount of imagination to know what was going on, between the lines. There was so much more that I wanted to know about Lucy's childhood, her marriage and weird husband and her daughters. I like Elizabeth Strout's writing and enjoyed the read despite my many unanswered questions.

2 people found this helpful

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KATRINA SPENCER

Still unsure

Reviewed in Australia on 26 March 2017

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I enjoyed the writing style and voice in this book. It was a slow and gentle read but I am still not sure if I liked it or not or what it was really about. It almost felt like a play set in a room with strained dialogue between 2 characters. I feel I know little more about Lucy B than I did at the start. But in saying that I enjoyed the read.

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Anne Connolly

Similar style to Olive Ketteridge

Reviewed in Australia on 8 February 2017

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You are reminded of her other great novel Olive Ketteridge but this one is more personal. She writes for the reader, very much enjoyed this.

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GAYLE

Three Stars

Reviewed in Australia on 9 March 2017

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An easy read

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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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I found the mother-daughter relationship unconvincing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 December 2021

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I found the central core of this book – the relationship between Lucy Barton and her mother – very unconvincing.

Lucy’s mother had come from Illinois to New York City to visit her daughter, who was in hospital there, with unexplained complications after an appendectomy. They had not seen each other for many years; but the mother stayed by her bed, day and night, for five days, cat-napping in the chair by the bed. She never asked her daughter anything about her life, and instead reminisced about her own childhood and, quite inconsequentially, about a number of people she knew.

On the fifth day, Lucy had an X-ray, and her doctor saw a blockage, and said she might need surgery. Her mother then left abruptly, against Lucy’s protests. Lucy had no memory of her mother kissing her good-bye or indeed of her ever having kissed her. Lucy would see her only once more in her life – nine years later, when her mother was terminally ill.

Is that a credible relationship?

Lucy has her own reminiscences, some of them as inconsequential as her mother’s; but other, more interesting ones, are about her own childhood. These were only mental reminiscences, since her mother did not ask her anything about her life.

Her father had worked on a farm. The family was very poor and lived in an unheated garage. Lucy had spent a lot of time after hours in her school, where it was warm. She was an ardent reader and so successful a student that she had won a free place at a college outside Chicago, and eventually became writer.

It was at the college that she had met William, who was working there as a lab assistant. She had married him when she was twenty, and they had two daughters. William was the son of a German prisoner of war and the wife of a farmer for whom he had been working. Lucy’s father was ill at ease with his son-in-law: he had fought in the Second World War, and felt guilty for the rest of his life at having shot two young German civilians, and the blond William looked like one of them.

It turned out that Lucy did not need surgery; and, after another five weeks, she was allowed home.
William had come a few times to visit her in hospital. He had been left a lot of money, and the couple were now well off. When Lucy’s novels came out, they were a great and profitable success. We are told, without any details, that her and William’s marriage would be bad; that she would leave him and their daughters, and that they would both remarry, in her case a man who had also been born in great poverty, but who had become a brilliant cello player That story will be told by Elizabeth Strout in a later book, “Oh William!”

Unsatisfactory as I found the depiction of the mother-daughter relationship, I was sufficiently interested in Lucy to want to read that sequel.

4 people found this helpful

Cafelattedoris

It was OK....

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 August 2018

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Having read all the 'wow' reviews for this book, I have to say that I was quite underwhelmed. I wouldn't rave about it - it's OK. A touching story and one that we can relate to - an uneasy relationship with a mother, and times of reflection when in hospital. It's not a standout book for me, sorry.

14 people found this helpful

last year's girl

Beautiful voice, but not much in it

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 February 2020

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Committed to hospital with a serious – if never completely explained – illness, aspiring author Lucy Barton wakes up one morning to find her estranged mother by her bedside. Years later, Lucy recounts their conversations – about her abusive childhood and growing up in poverty, the people that she grew up alongside and her and her mother’s difficult relationship. Lucy Barton has a distinct, very human, literary voice – you can almost sense how Laura Linney must bring the role to life in Scottish playwright Rona Munro’s recent one-woman adaptation of the novel – but as a book, there’s not much in it.

2 people found this helpful

Sunshine

My Name Is Lucy Barton

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 July 2020

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This was a book-club book and a new author for me.

This is not a fast paced action filled story. In fact, as i was reading it i felt like i was waiting for something to happen. It didn't.....and nothing was meant to happen! This is "just" a story.......and by "just a story" i mean it is about Lucy Barton, her life and her relationships with her family, especially with her mother.

While reading this book it made me reflect on my own relationships with friends and family. I think there is a little bit of all of us in this story.

This story didn't exactly blow my socks off but it was a well written emotional story about family, life and love. It was a very "like it", "hate it" book, but it had us, as a book club, discussing our own families and emotional situations.

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