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“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 both Penguin and Random House for preview copies. 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. :)

P.S. There's a great article here about how Strout was prompted to write the book. I can't post a link, but if you remove the spaces after the ew it should work.

ew. com/books/author-interviews/elizabeth-strout-oh-william/