My Name is Lucy Barton is a short book about love and family. It opens with Lucy in a New York hospital bed recovering from a mystery virus. For various reasons her husband and young daughters do not visit her much and so her Mother turns up for an extended stay at Lucy's bedside. Lucy lies there, her Mother talks, and that is pretty much the gist of the book.
As we listen to her Mother's tales the story of Lucy's life emerges and small truths are revealed. Lucy's life is not what we first perceived it to be and neither is her Mother's.
They have both suffered from extreme poverty and emotional abuse. The small town tales that her Mother tells (which are almost like short stories within the book) bring the woman closer together, but there is still something missing and something that is left unsaid so they fail to reconnect and reconcile completely.
My Name is Lucy Barton was a quick read. It is beautifully written but I found it was a little lacking in substance. The characters of the two women felt rather flat and just as the women fail to connect in the story I failed to connect to their characters. Perhaps this is what the author intended?
I can't say that I disliked the book, the sparse elegance of the prose made it highly readable but I wish it had had more depth and detail overall.
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