It’s rare now for me to re-read a book, especially a contemporary novel. Whereas I can read certain “classics” multiple times (six in the case of Middlemarch, five for Pride and Prejudice) I’d be hard pressed to think of many novels written in the last twenty years or so that I’d keep turning to again and again.

There are some notable gems (The Handmaid’s Tale for example or Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell series), but generally contemporary novels don’t have the depth I feel I need to sustain even a second re-read. So my re-read of My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout is an unusual event.

I first read this book in 2016 (my review is here) and though I enjoyed Strout’s exploration of a mother/daughter relationship, I probably wouldn’t have thought of reading it again. But then, earlier this year I fell in love with her earlier novel Olive Kitteridge and became hungry to read more of her work. I knew that there are connections between several of her novels, with recurring themes and characters who appear and re-appear from one title to another. So I thought that in order to get the most out of the experience I should read them in order of publication, beginning by refreshing my memory of Lucy Barton .

The Lucy Barton who tells the story is a gentle fragile soul we encounter through her recollections of childhood. She lies in a hospital bed with complications resulting from some routine surgery, separated from her husband and children. Unexpectedly the mother from whom she’s been estranged for several years arrives at the hospital and spends night after night asleep in a chair by her daughter’s beside.

They talk, mostly sharing gossip about people from the rural Illinois town where Lucy grew up. These might seem like the warm and congenial chats you’d expect between two people who are comfortable in each other’s company. But they are really diversionary tactics so they don’t have to talk about the unpleasant things Lucy experienced in her childhood.

When she was growing up her family was so poor that for a time their home was an unheated garage. One room for five of them with no running water and just one window. Only school offered a respite with its ready supply of books and heating.

The level of deprivation is palpable as too is the sense of isolation and loneliness. Ostracised by her classmates who called her “stinky” and “dirty”, for years Lucy’s only friend was a single tree that grew in the cornfields surrounding her home. More disturbing however is that she and her siblings were subjected to some cruel and violent behaviour from her parents.

On occasion and without warning, we’re told “ my parents —and it was usually in the presence of our father — struck us impulsively and vigorously, as I think some people may have suspected by our blotchy skin and sullen dispositions .” She also recalls being locked in a truck, terrified that she is sharing the space with a snake.

It’s clearly an experience that has left a deep emotional scar yet there is never any mention of this during her conversations with her mother. They spend day after day together in that hospital room but there is so much that goes unsaid. Her mother doesn’t speak about her husband, nor ask about Lucy’s husband nor even about her grand-children.  

It’s difficult to pin down what’s going on here. It’s feasible of course that the woman disapproves of Lucy’s husband William so can’t bear to hear about him but what grand-mother doesn’t want to know every last detail about her grandchildren’s lives?

And then we come to the thorny question of her attitude towards her daughter. She must have loved Lucy to have taken her very first plane trip just to be with her daughter, terrified at having to navigate the airport, take taxis and navigate the streets of New York all alone. But she never ever tells her daughter that she loves her.

It’s evident that Lucy aches for her mother’s love, longs to hear the words “I love you” so much that she almost begs her mother to utter those few words. But her mother never does, turning Lucy’s request into a joke. But even years after their time together in the hospital, Lucy feels the absence of those words. She tries to dismiss it as just her mother’s way “ I feel that people may not understand: It was all right”, she declares. Those last few words “it was all right” sounded to me like resignation rather than happy acceptance of a situation.

Maybe I just didn’t notice it first time around but on second reading, it struck me that this is a desperately sad story. Now of course I’m wondering whether the Lucy Barton I’l meet again in later books will be in a more settled place in her life. She has a small part in the next book Anything is Possible and then we get a whole Lucy story in Lucy By The Sea.