My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

 

A woman talks about a time in her life when she was hospitalized for over two months after an everyday operation went wrong.  She was married to a man named William and had two small daughters.  Her name was Lucy Barton and she was alone most of the time in the hospital.  Her husband had all he could do to handle the two girls by himself and keep working.  Finally, he called her mother and paid for her to come for a visit.

Lucy had left her family early when she was the only one in the family to go to college and had never returned.  Her family was desperately poor and Lucy and her siblings were teased and humiliated in school and elsewhere.  Their clothes were hand-me-downs and the entire family lived in an uncle's garage for many years.  

Lucy's mother comes and stays with her, talking about the town Lucy had left and all the people she had known.  She remains for a week or so and it is more attention from her than Lucy could ever remember having in her entire life.  Lucy remembers the good things about her childhood but occasionally, memories of the horrific things her parents did also rose to the surface.  Both good and bad had contributed to who Lucy was.

This book garnered a lot of praise.  It was nominated for both the Booker and Women's Prize for Fiction and was named one of the best books of the year by numerous media outlets.  The slow reveal of Lucy's childhood is enticing to the reader and the more they read, the more they learn about what Lucy's early years had been.  This is the first of four novels that focus on various stages of Lucy's life and that of her husband, William and is recommended for readers of literary fiction.