Novelist Elizabeth Strout??’s New Book ‘My Name Is Lucy Barton’
Elizabeth Strout, novelist and short story writer, has just released her brand new novel, My Name Is Lucy Barton, which seems to be winning the hearts of everyone. The synopsis for the book can be read below.
“Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucy’s childhood in Amgash, Illinois, seems to reconnect them, but just below the surface lie the tension and longing that have informed every aspect of Lucy’s life: her escape from her troubled family, her desire to become a writer, her marriage, her love for her two daughters. Knitting this powerful narrative together is the brilliant storytelling voice of Lucy herself: keenly observant, deeply human, and truly unforgettable.”
There is a lot of wisdom and openness to be found in Elizabeth Strout’s newest novel. On its surface, it feels like a simple story about a mother recovering from an illness and is in the process of rectifying a broken relationship with her mother. But what lies beneath is a much more layered, nuanced, and deeply emotional. In this way, it is very much like all of Elizabeth’s novels.
“I write because I want the reader to read the book when they may need it,” Strout said in an email, as reported by the New York Times. “For example, when I first read ‘Mrs. Dalloway,’ I thought: ‘Wow, I really need this book!’ So I always hope that a reader will find the book when they need it, even if they didn’t know they needed it.”
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Elizabeth Strout is not a fan of simply using her characters as pawns in order to drive home a particular message. She also doesn’t mask her own experiences within the characters she creates, which tends to be an assumption that is made about most writers and their process. Lucy Barton blends together organically and over time, as the dialogue begins to establish who the characters are and certain scenes begin informing the tone of the story. Even the initial writing process is organic and fluid.
Strout will begin by taking all of the ideas she has in her mind, about characters and their backstories, and sketching them out on scraps of paper. Some she tosses away and some she keeps, no matter where she is or what she is doing. It is a process that really seems to have paid off for her, with plenty of critics absolutely loving her work, Strout’s newest novel in particular.
My Name Is Lucy Barton is a novel that deals with love, whether it’s from parents, children, or spouses. Love that can be imperfect and the pure goodness that often tends to exist within a person, next to any amount of unhealthy negativity they may have.
Strout won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel Olive Kitteridge, which consists of a series of short stories dealing with a woman and her immediate family and friends in Maine, where Strout was born. The book later was adapted into an HBO miniseries that ended up winning six awards at the 2015 Primetime Emmy Awards. In June 2010, Olive Kitteridge and Elizabeth were voted as the winner of the Premio Bancarella award in Pontremoli, Italy.
Elizabeth Strout grew up in small towns in Maine and New Hampshire. She is currently married to former Maine Attorney General James Tierney, who is the Director of the National State Attorney General Program at Columbia Law School. Strout spends her time traveling between New York and Maine.
[Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images]
