Another great book by Elizabeth Strout. A unique voice which looks at relationships especially otherness where Lucy Barton looks at how her upbringing affects relationships with her ex husband and her children.

Oh I loved this!

A painstakingly careful and thoughtful inspection of the lies we tell ourselves and others, and the mythologies we build around both to be able to move forward in the world, this is an acutely accurate and deeply sympathetic portrait of humanity and grief.

Everyone is flawed. Everyone one is contradictory. Everyone is merciful in their own - sometimes harmful - way. Because everyone is.

Exceptional.

I loved the way this book was written, (as though you were having a chat with someone and they were telling you about themselves), but I found the story a bit vague. I found William an unlikeable character and the narrator a bit weak. If you want a book that's a snapshot into people's lives, then this is the book for you. Well written and intresting.

I love Elizabeth Strout and I loved My Name is Lucy Barton, but I enjoyed this a little less than everything else I’ve read by her and felt faintly disappointed. ⁣
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This is about Lucy Barton’s relationship with her ex-husband William. The two remain on friendly terms and after his 70th birthday and the death of her second husband, he seeks Lucy’s help as he confronts a series of revelations about his late mother. There is real tenderness in her portrayal of the relationship between William and Lucy, the gentleness and generosity of their relationship against the history of their tumultuous marriage - even after all this time a form of love that never really fades away. As always, Strout is wonderfully insightful with an ability to capture the universal peculiarities of human feeling. In the middle of rural Maine, Lucy suddenly has a deep sense of belonging to this place she has never been to, an inexplicable sense that ‘these are my people’. ⁣
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Yet there was something about this book that felt less moving than her other novels. Lucy’s neuroticism felt slightly grating in this novel, and makes her significantly less sympathetic than a character like Olive Kitteridge. William was also a little unbearable, between his self-absorbed womanising, delicate male ego and the coddling he nonetheless expected from his ex wife. ⁣
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#OhWilliam #ElizabethStrout

Oh dear! My second try with Elizabeth Strout and my second failure, I'm afraid. I just can't seem to connect to this writing style, somehow. It's clear and transparent but where I think I'm supposed to feel emotional pain and wryness, I just feel... nothing. It's probably me, not the book - sorry!

For readers familiar with Ms. Strout's previous two novels, Oh William! will seem like sitting down with an old friend. Lucy Barton is one of those rare people with whom you feel that no experience is too painful or personal to discuss. She emerged from the nightmare of her childhood into the unsettled life of a celebrated writer who was once married to William, an emotionally distant and chronically unfaithful man. The new novel begins after the death of Lucy's second husband and the collapse of William's third marriage, when his unexpected dependence forces an awareness of her own strength and a re-evaluation of the beliefs that have sustained her. Lucy is one of the most unsparingly honest characters in contemporary literature. In her struggles, failings, and doubts, we recognize ourselves

. For me, the book is a continuation of the continuous untangling and re-tangling of the relationship between Lucy and William. In both Lucy Barton and Oh William, there were things I loved about both Lucy and William, but there were also things I hated about both those characters as well. Just like in real life, nothing is all good or all bad, and these two people are perfect examples of that. Strout even has a quote on her website that drives this home, “It is not ‘good’ or ‘bad’ that interests me as a writer, but the murkiness of human experience and the consistent imperfections of our lives.” Murky completely describes Lucy and William’s relationship, where each individual is a character in the story and their relationship is another character entirely..

I resonated with so many of the feelings and experiences described in this book. Strout has a beautiful and apt writing style that captures the essence of what is important in any human interaction — even within oneself. I was often brought to tears — not because anything particularly sad was happening — but because she captured it so perfectly.

Just as Elizabeth Strout’s last novel, Olive Again, revisited a much-loved character so Oh William! renews our acquaintance with the eponymous narrator of My Name is Lucy Barton who has unexpectedly bumped into her first husband.

Lucy’s beloved second husband died a year ago. William has his own problems and is about to accumulate more. Before his wife leaves him, taking their ten-year-old daughter with her, she gives William a subscription to a genealogy website and now he’s been faced with a bombshell. All this, together with the night terrors he’s been suffering have deeply unsettled him. He asks Lucy to accompany him to Maine where he wants to meet the family he had no idea he had. Lucy is left pondering her own impoverished childhood, her relationship with William’s mother and, ultimately, her marriage to this man with whom she had always felt safe.
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Strout neatly slips in details from Lucy’s past, helpful for those who have yet to read My Name is Lucy Barton or have a sketchy memory, reminding us of Lucy’s successful writing career, her aching loneliness and her desolate childhood. As ever, Strout’s characters are complex, her themes deeply human and her writing is subtle, leaving much for her readers to infer. Another Strout triumph, although it has to be said that while I love Lucy but my heart belongs to Olive.

I am a great fan of Elizabeth Strout's books, particularly the Olive Kitteridge novels. Oh William! has some of the original charm and quirkiness of the first Lucy Barton book but, for me, does not quite have the same bite, although I really enjoyed reading it to fill in many of the gaps about Lucy's life. I think this is beautifully written in a disarmingly casual, artless style that belies its cleverness at engaging the reader and carrying them along with the plot. As ever I was sorry when it ended, and I look forward to reading another instalment from the well-crafted pen of this author.

Elizabeth Strout is one of my favourite authors, an exceptional writer and I was really excited to see not only that she’d written a new book but that Lucy Barton would be returning.

Reading the opening chapters of this book was like catching up with an old friend, comforting and thoroughly enjoyable. I love that Strout can convey so much in relatively slim volumes.

When we meet Lucy now, she has lost her second husband and her first husband, William is married to his third wife. Lucy’s character has softened over the years , she’s achieved success as an author and seems happier and more comfortable in her skin although she’s still shaped influenced by her early life, references to this appear throughout the book. It was great to know Lucy as an older woman but I can’t say the same for William, he’s not a character I warmed too and a lot of this book centres around him, although I very much enjoyed reading about his mothers life.

Even though this book is the third book of the series, it can be read as a stand alone novel, I think I’d recommend reading or re-reading My Name is Lucy Barton before hand though. I am sorry I didn’t as I think I possibly would have enjoyed this more if I’d reread earlier Lucy.

I did find myself less eager to pick the book up as the story went on. I’ve read Strout’s other books in one sitting so this was unusual for me. I think it was because of my lack of love for William as a character and not a reflection on the writing, which as always, was wonderful.

A comforting ,gentle read but probably my least favourite of the Amgash series , unfortunately.

Elizabeth Strout is a fantastic writer and this book, like her previous novels, is beautifully written. I really like the character of Lucy Barton, In Oh William! age and life have mellowed her and she is much softer, wiser and more forgiving than she was in My Name is Lucy Barton. I think that readers will get so much more from Oh William! if they have also read the first book and so are aware of the emotional journey Lucy's character has been on previously, I'm not sure what I would have made of the book if I hadn't read the first book,

For me, Strout's characters are always struggling with the regret and sadness of not living lives that are really true to themselves. Sometimes that makes for emotionally uncomfortable reading but in Oh William! Lucy's character seems to have finally come to terms with who she truly is and what she truly feels. I think readers will finish this book feeling content that Lucy has come through everything that life has thrown at her and is okay with herself and with the choices she made along the way.

For me this felt more like a biography / autobiography than a novel. It isn't my favourite book by Elizabeth Strout. I liked it but I missed the gossip about the ordinary people around her that is in her other books. I didn't warm to William and I didn't really care about him or what happened to him. I found the story of his Mother much more interesting. If you've read the other Lucy Barton books this will tie up some loose ends for you. Special thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest opinions.

This book is subtitled “Amgash #3”. And in preparation for reading this one, I re-read “Amgash #1” (“My Name Is Lucy Barton”) and “Amgash #2” (“Anything Is Possible”). The first thing to say is that this is more of a collection than a series, by which I mean you don’t need to read them in order. I would go as far as to say that you really should read “My Name Is Lucy Barton” before reading “Oh William”, but you can skip “Anything Is Possible” and come back to it later if you want. “Amgash #1” tells us the story of Lucy’s time in hospital when her mother comes to visit for a few days and it opens up Lucy’s history along with that of several other people she knows. “Amgash #2” explores the lives of some of those “several other people”, so Lucy is not so much the focus, whereas here, in “Amgash #3”, the spotlight returns to Lucy. In the first book, she told us she wasn’t ready to tell us about her relationship with her first husband, William, but, as the title of this book indicates, now, several years later, she is ready.

One of the reasons it is worth knowing all of this is that it stops you thinking, as I almost did when I saw the book cover on NetGalley, that this is some kind of Enid Blyton story about a naughty schoolchild. It was only when I saw the author that I realised who the William referred to must be and understood what the book was going to be about. In the first book, Lucy said ”This is not the story of my marriage, I cannot tell that story”. Here, she starts out with ”I would like to say a few things about my first husband, William.”

If you have read “My Name Is Lucy Barton” (which, as I say, you really should before reading this), then you will know what kind of thing to expect. All three books in the collection are fundamentally sad books, but the first and the last somehow manage to include some hope (I found the middle book, a collection of short stories, to be unremittingly depressing and therefore much harder work to read). The story in this book is driven by events that mean Lucy and William start to spend much more time together than they have since their marriage failed (they have remained on good terms all the way through). Just as Lucy’s time in hospital talking to her mother meant that she found herself reflecting back on her early life, so time spent with William here causes her to re-evaluate her past.

A persistent theme through all the books, including this one, is people’s roots. “Where you come from” is an important thing and it is about circumstances rather than geography i.e. do you come from poverty or wealth, from a loving family or a neglectful family. Lucy, as we have learned from the other books, had a very poor start to life (she “comes from nothing”) but has “made something” of herself. But she is always aware of where she started from and it casts a shadow over her life. The fact that others don’t see that when they look at her now leads onto another key theme in the book: how impossible it is to really know other people, or be known by them.

There’s a lot of sadness throughout this whole collection, but it is clear that the author is not setting out to depress people. The dedication reads, ”And to anyone who needs it - this is for you”. And it is true that somehow these books, especially #1 and #3, do find a way to lift the spirits despite the sadness of many of the characters.

I am always keen to read Elizabeth Strout’s novels and have never been disappointed. She is an exceptional fiction writer.

This book is a follow up to My Name is Lucy Barton although it is not necessary to have read the first story in order to enjoy this easy to read tale of Lucy. In this second story Lucy is recently widowed and misses her second husband David very much. She is still close to her first husband William and has a close and strong relationship with their two grown up daughters. This story does revisit some of the themes from the earlier book but focuses much more on William's story as told from Lucy's perspective. William is now in his seventies and is finding it difficult to cope with some secrets from his past that he has recently discovered. The ever patient Lucy is helping him to cope.
I do enjoy Elizabeth Strout's writing but in terms of chraacters I don't find Lucy Barton as memorable as Olive Ketteridge, the main character of another series of Strout's books. I found this new Lucy Barton novel a little thin in terms of plot and character development. I would rate the book as 3.5 and round up to 4 for the purposes of the starring system.
My thanks to the publisher via Net Galley for sending me a complimentary ARC of this title via Net Galley in return for an honest review.

A warm comforting bath of a book. I have met Lucy Barton in the previous books in this series, she can be quite acerbic and not always likeable. In this book she has just lost her second husband and her first husband, William, is at a similar loose end. The grief softens Lucy and she becomes a much more likeable character.

I very much enjoy Elizabeth Strout's prose - I can imagine short, dismissive phrases such as 'and that is all I want to say about that' coming from an elderly woman who is reviewing her life, and perhaps finding that she was not always right. The change in the relationship between Lucy and William develops beautifully, they grow to appreciate each other again and recognise each others faults.

Lovely read.

I an not sure why but I love books by Elizabeth Strout. They are quirky and very readable. The characters are always quite complex and their personalities are laid bare . Brilliant.

“Because I am a novelist, I have to write this almost like a novel, but it is true – as true as I can make it. And I want to say – oh, it is difficult to know what to say”

This novel is the third in Elizabeth Strout’s “Amgash” series – although perhaps better thought of as her Lucy Barton collection after the first novel in that series “Ny Name is Lucy Barton”. This book is I think best seen as a fairly direct sequel to that novel and best read back to back with it (with “Anything is Possible” a companion set of short stories which illuminate both novels).

In that book we hear something of Lucy’s first husband William – of his upbringing (son of a girl who ran away with an ex German Prisoner of War on his return to America) and of the early disintegration of their marriage with its roots in Lucy’s spell in hospital which is the centrepiece of the novel.

But we do not hear too much as Lucy as a writer (for the conceit of the novel is that it is actually a book written by Lucy years later when she is a successful novelist – at least in the eyes of others) is unable to tell it, as she says there ……..

"This is not the story of my marriage, I cannot tell that story: I cannot take hold of it, or lay out for anyone, the many swamps and grasses and pockets of fresh air and dank air that have gone over us. But I can tell you this; My mother was right: I had trouble in my marriage. And when the girls were nineteen and twenty years old, I left their father, and we have both remarried. There are days when I feel I love him more than I did when I was married to him, but that is an easy thing to think – we are free of each other, and yet not, and never will be".

But in this novel, set many years later, starts by contrast

“I would like to say a few things about my first husband, William. William has lately been through some very sad events – many of us have – but I would like to mention them, it feels almost like a compulsion; he is seventy one years old. My second husband, David, died last year, and in my grief for him I have felt grief for William as well”

As circumstances/events in her own life and that of William (the break up of a marriage, some news on his mother’s early life) both change the dynamic of the relationship between Lucy and William (and their two now adult children), while giving Lucy the chance to finally tell the story of her marriage, a story written in and around the story of what happens to her and William after these events – a story which, just like the conversations with her mother on the hospital bed allow Lucy to obliquely re-evaluate her own past, her actions and character and the actions of others.

Just as in the first novel the most heart-wrenching parts of the book are when Lucy reflects on small (or sometimes large) acts of kindness from others which she still remembers to this day - the impacts of which, the reader intuits, would astonish those who did them. And I think it is in that spirit that the moving dedication “And to anyone who needs it – this is for you” is written. In some cases also Lucy reflects on the equally lasting impact of more hurtful remarks or expressions – again one feels that the person making them would never have realised the harm of their remarks.

And this I think gets to another key part of the novel – Lucy’s increasing realisation that, despite being a novelist writing realist fiction, it is almost impossible to know what others think, feel or believe – a brave allusion for Elizabeth Strout as an author famous for what Hilary Mantel calls her “perfect attunement to the human condition”.

Overall I think a must read for any fans of Lucy Barton.

"But when I think Oh William!, don’t I mean Oh Lucy! too? Don’t I mean Oh Everyone, Oh dear Everybody in this whole wide world, we do not know anybody, not even ourselves! Except a little tiny, tiny bit we do. But we are all mythologies, mysterious. We are all mysteries, is what I mean. This may be the only thing in the world I know to be true."

The narrator has a confidential voice, going back over her life as a married woman, firstly to William and to David, the love of her life, who she has recently lost. We get a strong sense of her inner life, this woman with such a complicated and fragile personality. She is amazed when people recognise her as a well known author, because her upbringing has led her to believe she is invisible and outside of society. No wonder when she is not listened to, particularly by William and his mother, who she professed to have loved.
What we come from, and how we deal with it, is examined through revelations about William’s family history and how it relates to motherly love and the lack of it. Lucy has known love and the lack of it in her life, and how kindness and it’s absence has shaped her. It’s tone is confessional and that makes it feel slightly uncomfortable reading. We see things Lucy only hints at, particularly in relation to a supposedly supportive yet controlling mother in law, who ignores Lucy’s requests and does things her way.

Finding the extraordinary in the ordinary and the ordinary in the extraordinary is one of Elizabeth Strout’s writing talents. To truly appreciate ‘Oh William!’ it is probably advisable to read ‘My Name is Lucy Barton’ first as the latter focuses on Lucy as a young mother whilst the former explores her life post-divorce from her first husband, William, and life after the death of her second husband. Lucy is now 63; her daughters are adult and William has been left by his third, much younger wife. He turns to Lucy for solace.
Lucy agrees to accompany him to search for his half-sister of whose existence he has been unaware. Their travels allow her more reflections on her own upbringing as well as an exploration of why she married William in the first place.
This is a quiet novel, yet Strout’s writing is often profound, full of observations on love, anguish, contentment and sorrow. Lucy’s narrative voice is unique: Strout allows her to express the most profound ideas simply, a style which will appeal to many and, perhaps, irritate some. The novel concludes with Lucy’s suggestion that, ‘…we are all mythologies, mysterious. We are all mysteries, is what I mean. This may be the only thing in the world I know to be true.’ If this strikes a chord, then this novel is for you.
My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin General UK for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

To say that I was excited to receive an ARC of Elizabeth Strout’s new book was an understatement. She is one of my all-time favourite authors and I just adore her writing style. She is perhaps best known for the eponymous "Olive Kitteridge", which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009. Strout’s books are all connected to a greater or lesser degree with a recurring cast of characters based in quiet, rural towns in Maine and Illinois where on the surface nothing ever happens. But watch how Strout chips away at that small town veneer to expose passions, desires, secrets and dreams.

Oh William! is a follow up to "My Name is Lucy Barton", which is set in the 1980s. Lucy spends a long period of time in hospital, recovering from an operation, separated from her husband William and her 2 young children, with only her estranged mother for company. She had a very deprived childhood living in abject poverty and social exclusion in rural Amgash, Illinois. There were also suggestions of childhood abuse. "Oh William!" is a novel about her (first) husband from whom she is now divorced. The novel is narrated by Lucy and is as much about her as it is about William. Despite being separated, they have a good relationship. In many ways they operate better as friends than they ever did as a married couple. William is a semi-retired professor and leads an urbane lifestyle in New York. Lucy, who is now a successful author, is still socially awkward and panicked by the unfamiliar.

The novel examines how the couple first met, the development of their relationship over the years, along with some uncomfortable revelations, and the current state of their friendship. An innocuous birthday present to William results in the discovery of a family secret and a road trip to Maine. This leads to a series of very introspective conversations between William and Lucy on the nature of their marriage.

Strout has once again delivered a masterpiece. All her characters are so real and believable. She discerns the human condition so well, in all its glorious flaws and imperfections. She is also merciful and compassionate towards her characters, allowing the reader to experience every emotion and human fraiility.. While I felt that this book wasn’t quite as strong as "Lucy Barton", I still loved it, the literary equivalent of being wrapped up in a cosy, familiar blanket. Many thanks to Elizabeth Strout for bringing so much joy to readers. Worth also mentioning the beautiful dedication at the start of the book ..”And to anyone who needs it – this is for you.”.

Many thanks to @netgalley and @penguinbooksuk for this ARC in return for my honest review.