I struggled with this book. I really like Olive Kitteredge and her eccentricities. I found William, in this story, to be self-centered and uncaring. He and Lucy, his first wife, share two daughters who are now grown. When William's third wife leaves him, he discovers, through a DNA test, that he has a half-sister in Maine, and he asks Lucy to go with him to Maine, to see what they can discover. He not only discovers the half-sister, but also secrets about his mother, whom he revered. And he discovers that the life his mother created bears little resemblance to her real life.

Fans of Strout's earlier novels won't be disappointed. The reader is given the opportunity to spend more time with Lucy Barton and learns much more about her first husband, William. Told in Strout's signature style, the reader gets the privilege of spending more time with Lucy and her insights.

Thanks to Random House and Elizabeth Strout for the chance to read and review Oh William!

As I was reading Oh William! I wondered how many people would enjoy a novel where nothing happens. The answer is "lots", if it's by Elizabeth Strout. If you loved Olive Kitteridge you know what I mean.

This is another book about Lucy Barton, a character we have met before, but not, to my mind, with the depth and inner life we entered previously. It is full of wise and thought-provoking ideas. One that resonated with me is the attraction people have for those who seem to be in authority. It's as if we seek people in our lives
( I never mentioned Trump!) Strout also makes you think about how much your childhood, where you came from, where you lived, what class your family was influences who you are now. It's a book that will make you pause and think about your own life.

Lucy is 63 in this novel, having recently lost her beloved second husband, David. She has continued a post-divorce relation ship with her first husband, William, because they have two daughters together. William seems to count on Lucy a great deal despite being in a third marriage and having a third daughter with his third wife. William is 70 when his current wife leaves him and he looks to Lucy for sympathy.

When I said nothing happens I mean there are no surprises, yet I found this book impossible to put down. Perhaps I could chalk that up to loving Strout's writing. But it is more likely that she is a crafter of the human condition we can all relate to.

Every one of Elizabeth Strout’s book is aching with empathy, often for those who don’t seem to have earned that empathy. Her books, at their core, exude that feeling you get when you see, just for a moment, someone’s deep hurt and your heart breaks for them.

Oh William! is no exception, following as it does the journeys (real and metaphorical) of Lucy Barton (a recurring Strout character) and her first husband. Over the course of the book, you find yourself angry at almost every character, only for Strout to slay you with a deep insight into the flawed people who inhabit her world.

This is not a plot-driven novel; read it for those moments of painful empathy and for Strout’s unique, lovely voice. (And I swear this book is way more entertaining than this description might suggest.)

Lucy Barton is working hard to fill in the missing pieces. Now in her late 60's, she is trying to make sense of her life's journey. Her second husband has recently passed and she is spending time with her first husband William. We get glimpses of Lucy's impossible childhood, the gaps William filled for her, how his remoteness led to their marriage falling apart, the way their children fit in, and the question of reconciliation.

Lucy darts around and teases us with shreds of information, exposing us to things she is not going to get into right now. She refers to other parts of her life covered in other books... but always keeping the narrative going strong. I really feel for her character and will be putting Elizabeth Strout's previous Lucy Barton books on my TBR list.

I want to thank Random House Publishing, NetGalley, and Elizabeth Strout for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. #OhWilliam #NetGalley #RandomHousePublishing

I am posting this on NetGalley and GoodReads July 22, 2021.
"Oh William" publishes on October 19, 2021 and I will be posting reviews with Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BookBub, Twitter, and Facebook on that date.

Oh William by Elizabeth Strout is a very confusing read. Confusing in that it is a stream of consciousness which means Lucy’s thoughts are all over the place which means this reader was lost a lot. I also don’t understand how if Lucy loathed William by the end of their marriage how is she still close to him? Their daughters were off to college by the time they divorced so it’s not like they had to work out custody details. I just didn’t get this book, but I’m glad so many others enjoyed it. Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group for the ARC. All opinions expressed are my own.

I’m torn between 3 and 3.5 stars. I have not read I Am Lucy Barton, so she and William were new characters for me. While at times insightful, this book was all over the place with Lucy’s thoughts. Her rambling was distracting and left the book without flow. I enjoyed the sections that were telling a story, like when they are visiting Maine, but the rest of the story was choppy to me.

I received a prepub copy of this book for my honest review.

The first book of Elizebeth Strout that I read was "My Name is Lucy Barton" (2016) as it was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. I fell in love with her skills of capturing human emotions and desire with some humour. Lucy's mother, who is visiting her during nine weeks when Lucy, a writer who moved out of her hometown, is now hospitalized in New York, is telling the stories about people in Amgash, Illinois, a fictional town which Strout's next book "Anything is Possible" (2017) explores more deeply in a format of short stories.

The narrator of "My Name is Lucy Barton" is back! Lucy is now in her late 60s and his first husband, William, is 71 years old. Lucy's second husband David (the cellist) is now dead and William's third marriage is about to collapse. Lucy and William have been in touch and William, suddenly with his life in crisis, embarks on his journey to his dead mother's past in Maine.

Lucy is still unsure of herself, using ""_____ is what I mean" as if she is afraid of not being understood. Lucy thinks she is invisible though her stories tell it otherwise. Whenever William sounds dishonest or disengaging, Lucy suddenly declares "Oh I missed David!" Because of these and her other shortcomings, Lucy is such a charming character.

And there is this:

The journey to Maine reveals "what" William's mother Catherine Cole came from. "What someone came from" is quite a strong motif that Lucy, who came from her impoverished childhood herself, wants to get out of. For Lucy, it is to understand Catherine and eventually William.

The book is funny, sometimes insightful and inevitably sad. It is a great tribute to humanity and its mysteries and what it means to know someone and have a relationship with that person.

Fans of Elizabeth Strout rejoice! This October the Queen of Character-rooted Story is back with a portrait of the relationship between Lucy Barton and her first husband. Oh my god my heart! I adored this tranquil and tender study of a divorced couple in their twilight years. Read this when you are not in the mood for plot 😜 but instead in the mood for a description of the human condition through simple elements that carry real depth. It is Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler meets Souls at Night by Kent Haruf. Best paired with room service Caesar salads, cheeseburgers and a glass of white wine. XO, Tara

A book about relationships that all were troubled. Relationships of mothers /daughters:son /mother: husbands/ wives: sisters: stepsister : brother and step sister : lovers.:fathers being abusive and uncaring. Very complex at times understanding all these relationships. The predominant relationship was between Lucy and William. At times Lucy’s thoughts were interesting but often the reader became bogged down in the mundane ramblings of Lucy and William. Life is hard but struggling with the complexity of strained relationships and trying to function with work , family , friends and general living is the premise of this book.

Oh William! is Elizabeth Strout at her best - sparse language, descriptive words, and insight into the emotions behind the facade people present to the world. Returning to her Lucy Barton character in Oh William!, Strout depicts the bond between a divorced couple, both of whom subsequently had other spouses, that ranges from respect and love to dislike and revulsion. As Lucy and William interact, the journey they takes helps Lucy gain a sense and understanding of self-worth while balancing the emotions raised by how she perceives others see her.

Stylistically, Strout uses short sentences and strong words to leave an impact with the reader. Oh William! is an easy read that leaves one wanting more - not only about Lucy, but her daughters and William, too.,

I keep trying and trying to get used to the style of the writing— like listening to a much older person think out loud, but not in an exciting or even remotely pleasant way., I have restarted it a few times and it’s a little older feeling and depressing. Sigh!

Strout does it again! Oh William is yet another genius, extraordinary, beautiful novel. I read it in a day and found myself so moved by every page. 500 stars!

5★
“Grief is such a—oh, it is such a solitary thing; this is the terror of it, I think. It is like sliding down the outside of a really long glass building while nobody sees you.”

I loved this, which is no surprise since I’ve enjoyed Strout’s writing since I first read it. I’ve never been particularly fond of Lucy Barton herself.

She grew up in extreme poverty, was called smelly at school, and her home life was violent, due to her father’s post-traumatic stress after his World War 2 experiences in Germany. They lived an isolated life outside of town.

She’s just buried her second husband, David, who was raised as a Hasidic Jew, so he was another kind of outsider, and they understood each other as nobody else could.

“My husband’s name was David Abramson and he was—oh, how can I tell you what he was? He was him! We were—we really were—kind of made for each other, except that seems a terrifically trite thing to say but— Oh, I cannot say any more right now.”

This is like leafing through letters from a friend. Lucy frequently interrupts herself, saying she must add one more thing. Or sometimes she says she can’t talk about it right now. Some of it is new news, some of it is catching you up on what she might not have told you in the past, or reminding you of what she did tell you, because you’re old friends.

By that, I mean that she’s referring to ‘her’ first book, My Name Is Lucy Barton, and the short stories that ‘she’ wrote about her hometown of Amgash, Anything Is Possible. You do not need to have read those books to enjoy this one. She brings you up to speed with anything important.

Lucy is sixty-three now, a well-known author whose books are sold all over the world. She has travelled everywhere, but she has never really lost her feeling of awkwardness, of not belonging, of being invisible.

“I have always thought that if there was a big corkboard and on that board was a pin for every person who ever lived, there would be no pin for me.

I feel invisible, is what I mean. But I mean it in the deepest way. It is very hard to explain. And I cannot explain it except to say—oh, I don’t know what to say! Truly, it is as if I do not exist, I guess is the closest thing I can say. I mean I do not exist in the world. It could be as simple as the fact that we had no mirrors in our house when I was growing up except for a very small one high above the bathroom sink. I really do not know what I mean, except to say that on some very fundamental level, I feel invisible in the world.”

She mourns David but keeps on keeping on, largely because she is still strongly connected to the two daughters she had with William, her first husband. The girls are adults, close to each other, and they shop and lunch with their mother. William lives with his third wife and their ten-year-old daughter.

The exes have settled into a kind of fond, companionable relationship, so much so that it’s easy to think they will end up together again – happily ever after! Then the prickliness between them becomes scratchy again, and it's thank goodness she’s out of there!

Very early in the book she tells us about Joanne. She frequently drops these kinds of bombshells.

“About a year after our marriage ended, William married a woman he had had an affair with for six years.”

But they'd raised two daughters during the twenty years they were married, so there is a lot of family history between them, much of it happy. There are many nostalgic reminiscences about family celebrations, and ‘Remember Whens’.

She’s writing ‘today’, telling us anecdotes and truths as they occur to her. She moves through her life story in a linear order, but of course when she is reminded of her childhood or young married life, she stops to talk about it. She is more sophisticated and worldly, and is embarrassed sometimes by William - his clothes or his manner - which is when she thinks “Oh, William!” with fondness.

William has asked her to go with him to research his mother’s family history in Maine, because he’s discovered some shocking news, and he needs Lucy with him. They will fly together then rent a car and stay in towns along the way. It is trite to say it’s a journey of discovery, but of course, it is.

Lucy does not write as if she’s a literary author; she writes conversationally, almost embarrassed to say how foolish she was, how inexperienced, how awkward, how invisible. She is emotional and raw and very insightful – now.

She thinks it’s only in retrospect that she has some idea of what was going on. I'm inclined to think she was easy for someone (William) to measure himself against and be sure he'd come out ahead.

When William’s mother, Catherine, who features largely in the book, took them on family holidays to fancy resorts, Lucy said people lounging around the pool knew how to relax and order drinks.

“. . . how did they all know what to do? I feel invisible—as I have said—and yet in that situation I had the strangest sensation of both being invisible and yet having a spotlight on my head that said: This young woman knows nothing.”

That is something like the quotation I opened with, where she wrote about grief being like sliding down a glass building (obviously visible) but nobody sees you.

There is a time when they are driving that William reminisces about something odd he’d seen Lucy do during their marriage and how he’d laughed at her. Telling her now, he laughs again.

“I looked out the window of my side of the car, and my face became very warm.
‘You’re a strange one, Lucy,’ he said after a moment.
And that was that.”

She remembers that David loved her, admired her, was thankful they had met.

“And then he would say—every morning he said this— ‘Lucy B, Lucy B, how did we meet?
I thank God we are we.’

Never in a thousand years would he have laughed at me.
Never. For anything.”

It’s a journal, it’s a road trip, it’s a family history, it’s an exploration of one woman’s invisible life except it isn’t invisible. She’s the crucial hub for her family and her extended family. I wish Lucy would just keep adding to her letters or journal or reminiscences so I could check in with her from time to time. I do like her as a character now.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for a preview copy This is due to be published in October. I sure hope she is working on another one - either Elizabeth Strout or Lucy Barton, that is. :)

After reading the first few pages of Oh William I felt reconnected with my long lost friend Lucy Barton from Elizabeth Stout's previous books.
This story of relationships, discovery of the past as well as discovery of self is told in a relatable and comfortable way. Unputdownable!
I highly recommend this book and anything Elizabeth Strout writes.

I received an advanced copy of this book from Random House through NetGalley.

I haven’t read the first book but I didn’t need it to enjoy this book. I didn’t feel the context was missing. Yet, the author has a way of conveying characters in a realistic way, that I simply want to know what happened before.
I enjoyed this book. It’s portrayal of love, loss, and enduring friendship is captivating.

I've been wanting to read something by Elizabeth Strout for a few years so when I was offered an ARC, I happily read it. It was a quick read and I finished it in a weekend. It seemed that it would have been helpful for me to have read the two books in the series before this in order to have a better appreciation for the characters.

Lucy is the narrator and explores the family dynamics of her former husband. The writing style is conversational and flows well. "Oh William" is a bit of a condescending thought that Lucy often has when interacting with her first husband. They have a familiar but tense relationship when they both find themselves single in later life. Lucy accompanies William to explore some family secrets and the story goes back and forth with Lucy's history as well.

Thank You Random House, NetGalley and Author for Oh William!

Sadly I have not read the two first books that goes with Oh William!
And honestly wished I did first before reading this.
Because you don't know what has happened to Lucy's husband and such.

But anyways this was a funny, sad, and moving.
You Elizabeth Strouts writing style is very amusing, smooth and engaging.
I loved that this was about imperfect people dealing with everyday struggles.
Which I simply love in lit fiction novels.
This book is beautifully written and definitely not one to be missed. I will definitely be checking out more books by this author.
I couldn't put my kindle away long enough. Because I couldn't get enough of this story.
Now I'm off to buy the first two books and read those.

Again thank you so much for the opportunity to read this out so novel!

This is a short novel that packs a big punch.

In Oh William, we follow Lucy Barton, later in her life, as she reflects on her relationships with her family and her first husband, William.

Lucy’s second husband recently passed away and, not long after, she ends up supporting William when he discovers that he has a long-lost relative that his mother had never mentioned before.

This book is so short - it’s two chapters, and is told entirely from Lucy’s perspective. It’s easy to finish in one sitting. There is not much plot, the reader mostly floats along with Lucy’s narrative.

I thought there were some great insights on childhood trauma and how the effects of that can carry on into adulthood, such as how Lucy’s abusive upbringing left her uncertain on how to behave “correctly” in her new social sphere.

The second half of the novel is when I really became invested in Lucy’s story. Her relationship with William, even after their divorce, was both sweet, funny, and slightly painful.

Overall, I enjoyed this one, I just wish there was more of it!

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group for the arc in exchange for my honest opinions.

My first reading experience with Elizabeth Strout was "Olive, Again" which I thought was very good book. This book, "Oh William!" is apparently the third book she has written about Lucy Barton, It too is a good read; not quite as good as Olive Again, but still pretty good. I am a reader who can no longer tolerate trollers, police procedurals, etc. I have put down way more books than I have finished. Books have to have good writing and a good (not cliched) story that interests me and moves me. When I started Oh William! I was pushing through it but by halfway through It was pulling me.
The story is at the beginning a current account of Lucy's history with her first husband William, in the wake of the death of her second husband. The book really takes off when Lucy travels to Maine with William to look for William's just discovered half-sister. Others will give you more details on the plot.
What I can say is that this is a book full of humanity (at least full of middle class NYC white humanity) and it moved me. I will be returning to Elizabeth Strout and her earlier Olive and Lucy books.