Elizabeth Strout is a Pulltizer prize winning author of Olive Kitteridge and The Burgess Boys, a New York Times best seller and has also been nominated as a shortlister for Man Booker 2016

When I first began to read My Name is Lucy Barton I initially thought there could be more depth to the novel. However, as I got reading and the plot began to thicken I started to really feel a part of Lucy and her family; I could start to see why the novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker 2016 award. 

Lucy’s is in hospital recovering from an operation and the recovery is slow.  Her husband does not like hospitals and so he calls her mother, who is petrified of travelling. The story is of the relationship of Lucy, her mother, and of the childhood she spent in Illinois, Amgash. 

Her childhood was far from idyllic, stories of poverty, hatred and of an abnormal love between herself, her parents and her siblings.  Lucy’s mother has never said I love you, but yet she states, on numerous occasions, she is okay with this. Again, this got me thinking – is Lucy okay about this. Why would she be telling an account of the deep and meaningful past that happened at the hospital?

The hospital appears to reconnect Lucy and her mother but, as the reader I could still sense, between the words, the tension between them. 

The troubles are there for Lucy and they are real – the love and devotion to her two daughters, her troubled marriage and her yearning of desire to become a write.