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jbingb 's review for:
Oh William!
by Elizabeth Strout
84: Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout.
Oh Elizabeth! Oh Elizabeth! So dependable as an author, you are. So trusted to transparently share, somehow, all that is inside of a soul, all that is important--in this case William's ex-wife, the writer Lucy Barton (remember her?)--to make us readers cringe and struggle and smile and tear up and more. This book is about William, oh yes, but it is as much or moreso about Lucy, too. And of course.
Strout's stream of consciousness storytelling takes us back into Lucy Barton's past and all the sense she has tried to make--or avoid--of it these many years since her...well, escape, really. It also takes us along and into William's life and past, as well, or his mother's, really: Catherine Cole's. I won't spoil a thing. Read it yourself.
You have to go there to know there: you have to read Strout to see how truly she represents everywoman and the struggle to now simply be, given all one has seen and been and lived and felt. It's not easy...but Strout makes it all...okay. Survivable. Strengthening. While I think one gains the very most by reading every Strout book to know all of her characters and know them well, one can certainly, instead, pick up just this one (or another) and be quite satisfied by THAT story. But here she makes Lucy Barton and any bit of Lucy that exists in any of us "seen"...if only newly by ourselves. And we, too, are likely to be okay.
Oh Elizabeth! Oh Elizabeth! So dependable as an author, you are. So trusted to transparently share, somehow, all that is inside of a soul, all that is important--in this case William's ex-wife, the writer Lucy Barton (remember her?)--to make us readers cringe and struggle and smile and tear up and more. This book is about William, oh yes, but it is as much or moreso about Lucy, too. And of course.
Strout's stream of consciousness storytelling takes us back into Lucy Barton's past and all the sense she has tried to make--or avoid--of it these many years since her...well, escape, really. It also takes us along and into William's life and past, as well, or his mother's, really: Catherine Cole's. I won't spoil a thing. Read it yourself.
You have to go there to know there: you have to read Strout to see how truly she represents everywoman and the struggle to now simply be, given all one has seen and been and lived and felt. It's not easy...but Strout makes it all...okay. Survivable. Strengthening. While I think one gains the very most by reading every Strout book to know all of her characters and know them well, one can certainly, instead, pick up just this one (or another) and be quite satisfied by THAT story. But here she makes Lucy Barton and any bit of Lucy that exists in any of us "seen"...if only newly by ourselves. And we, too, are likely to be okay.