Fiction
“You will have only one story,” she had said. “You’ll write your one story many ways. Don’t ever worry about story. You have only one.”
My Name is Lucy Barton – review of Elizabeth Strout’s book, by Tessa Moriarty.
If you tend to speed-read – as I do – you’d be wise to take this little gem of a book slow or risk missing the gold between the lines. Initially, I thought Strout’s writing, a little simplistic. Her sparseness of words made me want more (but that I discovered – is the magic with which Strout writes). So, I waited (and remembered I was given this book from a friend on the recommendation that it was good), slowed my pace and read on. As the story grew and the characters developed, I could see and feel something that was there, but not there. The emotion, the history, the story inside the story.
This book is about Lucy Barton (no surprise), and she is by others accounts – a woman who has come from nothing. But it is her so called nothingness that actually gives her everything. Because Lucy Barton’s internal world is rich and deep, despite how and where she has grown up. In fact, it is because of her poverty, and her ability to extract from her world exactly what she needed, that enabled her to become who she is and the character in the story we come to love.
This story (for the most part) is set when Lucy is in hospital and is visited there by her mother (because Lucy’s husband instructed his mother-in-law to come, because he himself could not stand to be there). For five days we are treated to the conversation between mother and daughter, as the two women engage in familiar and unfamiliar territory. We discover their history, Lucy’s childhood, her mother’s mothering – and who they’ve had to be. We even get a sense of who they want to be, to each other now. The strain between them stretches us, but we are enthralled, as we’re pulled into the knowing that there are things – like the love between them – that they cannot talk about.
We learn too, in a matter-of-fact way what Lucy endured as a child. We are treated to snippets of her life, her relationships with others, her naivety, her secrets, as she implores her mother to recount the histories and happenings of some of the people she grew up with. But it is not really the stories of others she wants from her mother – it is something more.
But it is not really the stories of others she wants from her mother – it is something more.
We come to know Lucy’s quaint ways and her almost intolerable willingness to accept and forgive. We want more for her than she seems to want for herself. We are with her though – in what she wants from her mother – more than anything else.
But it is the brevity with which Strout writes that is the most stunning thing about this book and what the words she uses don’t say. But do. She is the master of elucidating the absent. Deprivation, longing, heartache, loneliness, regret, isolation, triumph, love, and the pompous arrogance of others. It’s all there, in and between the lines, without the fluff of over-description.
May I tell you lastly – not to be deceived by the size of this book. It’s short, compact, but its impact holds you long after the last page. The story of Lucy Barton reminds me that small is big. Sparse can be complex and in spite of where or how we raised – there’s hope in life and there’s something in some folk that just makes them do better. Hands up for Elizabeth Strout. I’m looking forward to reading her next book.
