In My Name Is Lucy Barton, an introspective and largely independent writer looks back on a pivotal time in her life, the 1980s, when she was a patient in a New York City hospital for nine weeks. A bacterial infection after a "simple" appendectomy kept then-30-year-old Lucy Barton away from her husband, two daughters and their home in the West Village. While the writer lay hospitalized, her mother--whom she hadn't spoken to in many years--came to visit from Amgash, Ill., Lucy's rural hometown. With mother sitting vigil at her daughter's bedside--the Chrysler Building gleaming through the hospital window like a beckoning lighthouse--Lucy mentally navigates her way through the darkness of her illness, her New York City existence and her estrangement from her Illinois upbringing. Mother and daughter pass the time by reminiscing and telling stories, painful remembrances that gradually reveal their strained, emotionally distant relationship and the difficult childhood Lucy endured amid poverty, loneliness and ostracism.
In short, stream-of-consciousness flashbacks, Lucy reconstructs experiences from her past in a seamless narrative. She recalls people who made impressions on her as she grapples with her identity, her place in the world and choices that ultimately shaped her destiny. As in her other novels (The Burgess Boys, Olive Kitteridge), Strout probes the imperfect nature--and limits--of love, memory and forgiveness. The idea of how little we really know about people, and often even ourselves, is a central theme of this expertly crafted and deeply thought-provoking short novel. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines