My Name is Lucy Barton

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