This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.
Fiction.
Literature.
HTML:NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout explores the mysteries of marriage and the secrets we keep, as a former couple reckons with where they’ve come from—and what they’ve left behind.
ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review,The Washington Post,Time, Vulture, She Reads
“Elizabeth Strout is one of my very favorite writers, so the fact that Oh William! may well be my favorite of her books is a mathematical equation for joy. The depth, complexity, and love contained in these pages is a miraculous achievement.”—Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House
I would like to say a few things about my first husband, William.
Lucy Barton is a writer, but her ex-husband, William, remains a hard man to read. William, she confesses, has always been a mystery to me. Another mystery is why the two have remained connected after all these years. They just are.
So Lucy is both surprised and not surprised when William asks her to join him on a trip to investigate a recently uncovered family secret—one of those secrets that rearrange everything we think we know about the people closest to us. What happens next is nothing less than another example of what Hilary Mantel has called Elizabeth Strout’s “perfect attunement to the human condition.” There are fears and insecurities, simple joys and acts of tenderness, and revelations about affairs and other spouses, parents and their children. On every page of this exquisite novel we learn more about the quiet forces that hold us together—even after we’ve grown apart.
At the heart of this story is the indomitable voice of Lucy Barton, who offers a profound, lasting reflection on the very nature of existence. “This is the way of life,” Lucy says: “the many things we do not know until it is too late.”.… (more)
I have a love/hate relationship with this author and her books. I'm always in the minority too. This is only the second book I've read in this series (My Name Is Lucy Barton was the first) and I sort of liked the first one it seems by my review which was back in 2016.
It's written as a novel of course as Lucy said because she's an author. It's also written in first person but with conversation.
Lucy and William were married for 20 years and have two daughters. She's now a widow and she's 7 years younger than William who has been remarried twice. He is on his third marriage and is now 71 and his wife is 42 and they have daughter along with Chrissy and Becka who he had with Lucy. Despite being divorced, they seem to get along and he asks her to travel with him to uncover a recently found family secret. I can't believe how well they got along on that trip (mostly) and they reminisced about their marriage, etc. She was very close to his late mother and took care of her when she was dying. She reflects on her own life too and a few mentions about her writing career. She doesn't seem to be doing much writing now.
I can't believe I finished this book in one day. It was a pretty good read. Do I want to go back and read the others that I haven't read? Not sure. If they find me, yes, if not I'm not going to pursue them! ( )
I didn't care much for previous books by this author, but this one worked for me. It is the story of a divorced couple who are still friends. It's written in a conversational style....like the main character, Lucy Barton, is talking to the reader. And in this way, we come to know her and her ex, William, as they support each other through widowhood, divorce and finding a sibling William never knew he had. I must say, Lucy did most of the supporting and William most of the needing. That bugged me a little. A bigger problem was that Lucy often tells the reading that she wrote about something in a previous book. This seemed like little more than a marketing ploy. But it is a good story and an interesting look at family dynamics. ( )
The third volume in Strout's series about Lucy Barton, who grew up very poor in a small town in Illinois, but who is now living a rather more high-class life in New York City. This one focuses on her relationship with her ex-husband William, as he deals with some newly discovered family secrets and with being left by his current wife.
Strout, at her best, does this thing that I don't entirely understand but am always very impressed by, where she writes in this very, very plain, almost ridiculously simple kind of way, with prose that is so unpretentious that it might almost seem to border on inarticulate... and from that, she creates this incredibly insightful and realistic-feeling depiction of what it's like to be a human being and the complicated, half-understood stuff that's going on in our minds all the time.
That's at her best. I'm not sure this one quite achieves for me what the previous books in this series have, though. The extremely simplistic prose is here, and the human realism is here, but instead of the former somehow magically giving rise to the latter, this time I could see the seams between the two, and I kept getting distracted by them and feeling vaguely annoyed by some of the narrator's repetitive linguistic quirks. Is that because Strout has handled her narrative less smoothly this time? Or is it something to do with me as a reader, whether because I went in with too-elevated expectations or approached it in the wrong mood? Maybe William as a character didn't quite interest me enough for me to become sufficiently engrossed.
In any case, it's not that I didn't enjoy this one, or appreciate what it was doing, or find the characters believable and well-observed. I did. But it still just didn't quite do for me what I remember the previous volumes doing.
Rating: 3.5/5, although admittedly it's that low only because I'm making comparisons. ( )
Another wonderful read. I love Elizabeth Strout's books. After the first sentence I am already in Strout mood and not leaving it until the book is finished. ( )
I would like to say a few things about my first husband, William.
Quotations
What a strange thing life is.
This is the way of life: the many things we do not know until it is too late.
I turned and I said, "How are your night terrors these days, William?" William opened his hand and said, "They're gone." Then he added, "My life got worse, so they stopped."
Mommy, I cried inside myself, Mommy, I am so frightened! And the nice mother I have made up over the years answered: Yes, I know.
People are lonely, is my point here. Many people can't say to those they know well what it is they feel they might want to say.
"I'm really mean in my head, you wouldn't believe the mean thoughts I have." William threw his hand up and said, "Lucy, everyone is mean in their head. Jesus." "They are?" I asked. He half laughed then, but it was a pleasant laugh. "Yes, Lucy, people are mean in their heads. Their private thoughts. Are frequently mean. I thought you knew that, you're the writer. Jesus Christ, Lucy."
"She came from less than nothing. She came from trash." The word was like a slap across my face. That word is always like a slap across my face.
I walked through the double doors and saw right away that their restaurant was closed. Open at 5:00, a sign said. I gave a huge sigh and turned around to head back, and I thought to myself: When does anybody in this state eat? And just as I thought that I saw the fattest man I have ever seen. He was coming through the double doors that I had just come through, and he had pushed one of them open but this was not enough space for him to get through. He did not seem old; he may have been thirty, I do not know. But his pants went out on the sides of him like a ship almost, and his face was buried into itself. I let go of one of the suitcases and I pulled the other door open for him and he smiled in a way that seemed to me to be ashamed, and I said, "There you go," and he said "Thanks" with a kind of shy smile and he went up to the front desk in the lobby. I thought as I walked back to the airport—I thought: I know what that man feels like. (Except of course I do not.) But I thought: It's odd, because on one hand I think I am invisible, but on the other I know what it is like to be marked as separate from society, only in my case no one knows it when they see me. But I thought that about that fat man. And about myself.
As I looked out the window at New York City, I felt what I have almost always felt when I have flown into New York, and that was a sense of awe and gratitude that this huge, sprawling place had taken me in—had let me live there.
I suddenly remembered times early in our marriage in our Village apartment when I had felt terrible. It was about my parents, and the feeling that I had left them behind—as I had—and I would sometimes sit in our small bedroom and weep with a kind of horrendous inner pain, and William would come to me and say, "Lucy, talk to me, what is it?" And I would just shake my head until he went away. What a really awful thing I had done. I had not thought of this until now. To deny my husband any chance of comforting me—oh, it was an unspeakably awful thing. And I had not known. This is the way of life: the many things we do not know until it is too late.
But we are all mythologies, mysterious. We are all mysteries, is what I mean.
We went to bed and he was very kind but then he said "I'm shooting into Mommy! I'm shooting into Mommy!" and this frightened me beyond reason. After that I had to take two tranquilizers I had in my pocketbook and then I fell asleep next to him and slept through the night with my head over his chest.
But who ever really knows the experience of another? (39%)
People are lonely, is my point here. Many people can't say to those they know well what it is they feel they might want to say. (46%)
We crave authority. We do. No matter what anyone says we crave that sense of authority. Of believing that in the presence of this person we are safe. (51%)
Once every so often -- at the very most -- I think someone actually chooses something. Otherwise we're following something -- we don't even know what is but we follow it, Lucy. (58%)
And the thought came and went like a small bird through my mind. (61%)
What a really awful thing I had done.
I had not thought of this now. To deny my husband any chance of comforting me -- oh, it was an unspeakable awful thing. (76%)
I would give it all up, all the success I have had as a writer, all of it I would give up -- in a heartbeat I would give it up -- for a family that was together and children who knew they were clearly loved by both their parents who had stayed together and who loved each other too. (81%)
I could not believe this; it was a huge wave that poured over me. William was like the light in the museum, only I had lived my life thinking it was worth something.
Then I thought: It ws worth something. (86%)
Don't I mean Oh Everybody, Oh dear Everybody in this whole wide world, we do not know anybody, not even ourselves. (87%)
Last words
This may be the only thing in the world I know to be true.
Fiction.
Literature.
HTML:NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout explores the mysteries of marriage and the secrets we keep, as a former couple reckons with where they’ve come from—and what they’ve left behind.
ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review,The Washington Post,Time, Vulture, She Reads
“Elizabeth Strout is one of my very favorite writers, so the fact that Oh William! may well be my favorite of her books is a mathematical equation for joy. The depth, complexity, and love contained in these pages is a miraculous achievement.”—Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House
I would like to say a few things about my first husband, William.
Lucy Barton is a writer, but her ex-husband, William, remains a hard man to read. William, she confesses, has always been a mystery to me. Another mystery is why the two have remained connected after all these years. They just are.
So Lucy is both surprised and not surprised when William asks her to join him on a trip to investigate a recently uncovered family secret—one of those secrets that rearrange everything we think we know about the people closest to us. What happens next is nothing less than another example of what Hilary Mantel has called Elizabeth Strout’s “perfect attunement to the human condition.” There are fears and insecurities, simple joys and acts of tenderness, and revelations about affairs and other spouses, parents and their children. On every page of this exquisite novel we learn more about the quiet forces that hold us together—even after we’ve grown apart.
At the heart of this story is the indomitable voice of Lucy Barton, who offers a profound, lasting reflection on the very nature of existence. “This is the way of life,” Lucy says: “the many things we do not know until it is too late.”.
)
)
)
)
Google Books — Loading...
Wikipedia in English
1
It's written as a novel of course as Lucy said because she's an author. It's also written in first person but with conversation.
Lucy and William were married for 20 years and have two daughters. She's now a widow and she's 7 years younger than William who has been remarried twice. He is on his third marriage and is now 71 and his wife is 42 and they have daughter along with Chrissy and Becka who he had with Lucy. Despite being divorced, they seem to get along and he asks her to travel with him to uncover a recently found family secret. I can't believe how well they got along on that trip (mostly) and they reminisced about their marriage, etc. She was very close to his late mother and took care of her when she was dying. She reflects on her own life too and a few mentions about her writing career. She doesn't seem to be doing much writing now.
I can't believe I finished this book in one day. It was a pretty good read. Do I want to go back and read the others that I haven't read? Not sure. If they find me, yes, if not I'm not going to pursue them! (