November Book Club Pick - My Name is Lucy Barton

The November book club pick was My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout. I was very interested in reading a novel by a Pulitzer Prize winning author. Elizabeth Strout won the prize for two of her other novels and this novel was a #1 New York Times Best Seller, among other accolades. It was an interesting piece, and not having read any of her other books, I was unsure I fully understood it.

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

My Name is Lucy Barton is about a woman recovering in the hospital over a period of several weeks with unknown complications. She’s alone in the hospital, away from her two daughters, and a husband who has some kind of fear of hospitals and rarely visits. Instead, he calls her estranged mother to come and visit her for a few days. Their relationship is a difficult one and they haven’t seen each other in years. They have a troubled past that is not spoken of and their time together in the hospital is spent gossiping about people from back home. The conversation fills the space between them, but there’s a tension in it. Although Lucy’s terrible past most definitely shaped her future in many meaningful ways, she is comforted by her mother’s presence during this time.

What We Thought of My Name is Lucy Barton

The writing was lovely, but we all pondered what the meaning of this novel was. There wasn’t a real plot line or anything, with a beginning, middle and end. It was more like a diary entry from Lucy with random thoughts and feelings, that was kind of out of order and depressing. Her story was interesting, but the chapters (or random thoughts) would end before we could really get into her head. It never really got deep enough and left so many questions. Maybe this was the author’s intent with this piece, but we were looking for a bit more. Overall we didn’t hate it, but we were left feeling a bit cold and distant from Lucy Barton especially when it ended. I would be interested in reading one of her award-winning novels as Elizabeth has been praised so much.

We’d rate this one a 2.5 out of 5.

My Name is Lucy Barton Questions:

Because this book left a lot to our imaginations, we did have a lot to discuss. We used the author’s website for questions, because I couldn’t even think of any except for, “What was this book about?” We talked about the fragmented story and how maybe one chapter later on in the novel referred to another part of her life discussed previously, which was interesting. Overall we had a lot of questions about the “why” and had a big discussion about poverty and children who grow up in those situations which was a big backstory of Lucy Barton.