My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

Patty's loss of control upsets her even more than the girl's rudeness. Patty Niceley, a lonely, prematurely widowed high school guidance counselor, is taken aback when she realizes that the sneering student who's just called her Fatty Patty is the daughter of Lucy Barton's bitter sister, Vicky. One of the strongest stories, 'Windmills,' addresses two of her pet themes: how 'people were always looking to feel superior to someone else,' and the healing power of literature. You Must Read This Who Says You Have To Like A Character? Even the weaker links - about an actress from Maine, and a late-life, mother-daughter reconciliation in Italy - subtly fill in the sky portion of Strout's gracefully constructed narrative puzzle.

We follow avidly as Strout moves assuredly from one seemingly peripheral character to another: the janitor in Lucy's grade school who recalls her suspicious bruises and nervous refusal to make eye contact in the classroom where she sought safe haven to read after school the outwardly successful second cousin who shows up at her reading in Chicago two women who bond over the painful consequences of their mothers' defections from difficult marriages. Like Anderson, she paints cumulative portraits of the heartache and soul of small town America by giving each of her characters a turn under her sympathetic spotlight.

Anything Is Possible is a companion volume about the people Lucy came from, and their reactions to her latest successful publication, that memoir.Īs she has demonstrated beautifully in books like Amy and Isabelle and Olive Kitteridge, Strout is a master of the story cycle form most closely associated with Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. Readers who loved My Name is Lucy Barton - Strout's fictional memoir of her eponymous heroine's path from a grim, impoverished childhood in Amgash, Ill., to literary fame in New York - are in for a real treat. They remind us that a little kindness and compassion can open up surprising possibilities. These nine linked tales about people who overcome miserable childhoods, severe losses, disheartening marriages, and war trauma to experience moments of amazing grace offer comfort and reassurance. How?Įlizabeth Strout's new novel-in-stories, Anything Is Possible, is welcome literary salve for these alarmingly acrimonious, anxiety-inducing times.

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My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout