Lucy Barton is an interesting character created by Elizabeth Strout with an intriguing storyline narrated in a rather haphazard ways than a typical novel.
Perhaps that’s why it is a series of book rather than one single novel giving as all the details about Ms. Lucy Barton. So we come to know all the tidbits about her growing up years, her youth and adult life throughout this book. These books manages to present the journey of the character from one stage of life to another but in a flashback or retrospection sort of way.
And here is the first book of that famous series called My Name is Lucy Barton which is a retrospective inspection of Lucy of her childhood/ growing up years in rural Amgash, Illinois. But she ruefully remembers and narrates more about the people inhibiting her past than the place itself.
Most of the book occurs when Lucy is lying sick in the hospital bed and her mother comes to tend her sick bed in New York. As we delve deeper into the story, we come to know the superficially distant relationship between Lucy and her mother who comes to see her sick daughter and calls by the childhood name but doesn’t show an ounce of affection. It’s quite heartbreaking to hear Lucy’s cries of Mommy, almost pleading her to say ‘I love you’ which is never responding in any which by her mother.
Lucy talks in length about her father and her siblings too. But they come across as supporting characters in her childhood backstory rather than her mother. There are other characters in the novel including Lucy’s past and present husbands, her daughters and her enigmatic mother-in-law who later feature in other books in this series. However, there are more characters who come across as one off in this book like her neighbour and another famous writer whom Lucy befriends in a book store.
Readers are immediately drawn by author’s deeply emotional portrayal of Lucy’s deprived childhood; not only material deprivation but mainly emotional and psychological deprivation. She has been brought up in absolute poverty with an abusive father and emotionally absent mother. The similar traits are then passed on to the children who are distant from each other and not able to make a solid familial bonding either before or after their parents’ passing.
Lucy also shows streaks of this aloofness and inherent sadness when she is not able to connect with any materialistic objects like television programs, fashion magazines, foreign vacations and affluent lifestyle. Not only it creates problems between her and her first husband but also leads to disintegration of her relationship with several of her well off friends from their common social circle. These ongoing issues come to surface even in the later books of this series.
Having said all of that, the author’s persistent and solid narration fails to make this book engaging with many readers. Even I found it to be somewhat like interlinking of a jigsaw puzzle but not in an exciting manner. Given that the book has its own pace and narrative falters sometimes, still the subject line makes it an engaging read.
This book is a good point to start reading about Lucy Barton.