Author: whatcathyreadnext

#BookReview Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout @VikingBooksUK

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Oh William!About the Book

Lucy Barton is a successful writer living in New York, navigating the second half of her life as a recent widow and parent to two adult daughters. A surprise encounter leads her to reconnect with William, her first husband – and longtime, on-again-off-again friend and confidante. Recalling their college years, the birth of their daughters, the painful dissolution of their marriage, and the lives they built with other people, Strout weaves a portrait, stunning in its subtlety, of a tender, complex, decades-long partnership.

Oh William! captures the joy and sorrow of watching children grow up and start families of their own; of discovering family secrets, late in life, that alter everything we think we know about those closest to us; and the way people live and love, against all odds. At the heart of this story is the unforgettable, indomitable voice of Lucy Barton, who once again offers a profound, lasting reflection on the mystery of existence. ‘This is the way of life,’ Lucy says. ‘The many things we do not know until it is too late.’

Format: Hardcover (256 pages)         Publisher: Viking
Publication date: 21st October 2021 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find Oh William! on Goodreads

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My Review

At one point in the book William tells Lucy, ‘You steal people’s hearts, Lucy’ and it’s clear Elizabeth Strout has found it difficult to part with the character who first appeared in My Name Is Lucy Barton and more recently in Anything Is Possible. Oh Willam! definitely feels like the final instalment in Lucy’s story.

The book is narrated in the first person by Lucy in a conversational style, without chapter breaks, shifting back and forth in time to include memories of her traumatic childhood and the early years of her marriage to William and its subsequent breakdown.  As Lucy reflects on her own actions, things she could have done differently, and missed opportunities, it feels like something of a confessional. At one point, William accuses Lucy of being self-absorbed; it’s a fair accusation but then aren’t we all self-absorbed to some degree?

Although William and Lucy’s marriage involved much disappointment, including infidelity, what comes across is the continuing affection they have for each other.  The phrase ‘Oh William!’ occurs frequently, sometimes reflecting Lucy’s exasperation with William, at other times her feelings of pity, of tenderness or of understanding of what he’s going through.  After a period apart, during which much has happened in both their lives, they quickly return to being close confidantes.  And, of course, their daughters, Chrissy and Becka, provide a lasting link between them, evoking memories of happier times.  At one point, Lucy wonders, ‘What is it that William knew about me and that I knew about him that caused us to get married?’ The journey they take together to investigate a secret involving William’s family history left me disappointed that they couldn’t have made their marriage work. However, as Lucy reflects, ‘This is the way of life; the many things we do not know until it is too late.’

The most striking part of the book for me was the final section in which William and Lucy visit the area where William’s mother, Catherine, grew up and he learns more about his mother’s early life. It was here that I got the most sense of Lucy being a successful novelist as she imagines Catherine’s journey to a new life with William’s father. ‘Oh, I could see young Catherine half-running, half-walking down that windswept November dark road, and getting to the train station without her boots, just her shoes and snow on the ground…’ 

Oh William! demonstrates Elizabeth Strout’s trademark careful dissection of the way people act and interact, their hopes and regrets, and their struggles to come to terms with loss and disappointment.

In three words: Tender, insightful, acutely-observed

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Elizabeth StroutAbout the Author

Elizabeth Strout is the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge, as well as The Burgess Boys, a New York Times bestseller, Abide With Me and Amy and Isabelle, which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize. She lives in New York City and Portland, Maine. (Bio credit: Publisher author page/Photo credit: Goodreads author page)

Connect with Elizabeth
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#WWWWednesday – 20th October 2021

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WWWWednesdays

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

Currently reading

Black DropBlack Drop by Leonora Nattrass (eARC, Viper via NetGalley)

This is the confession of Laurence Jago. Clerk. Gentleman. Reluctant spy.

July 1794, and the streets of London are filled with rumours of revolution. Political radical Thomas Hardy is to go on trial for treason, the war against the French is not going in Britain’s favour, and negotiations with the independent American colonies are on a knife edge.

Laurence Jago – clerk to the Foreign Office – is ever more reliant on the Black Drop to ease his nightmares. A highly sensitive letter has been leaked to the press, which may lead to the destruction of the British Army, and Laurence is a suspect. Then he discovers the body of a fellow clerk, supposedly a suicide.

Blame for the leak is shifted to the dead man, but even as the body is taken to the anatomists, Laurence is certain both of his friend’s innocence, and that he was murdered. But after years of hiding his own secrets from his powerful employers, and at a time when even the slightest hint of treason can lead to the gallows, how can Laurence find the true culprit without incriminating himself?

The Vanishing HalfThe Vanishing Half  by Brit Bennett (Dialogue Books)

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it’s not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it’s everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities.

Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined.

What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters’ storylines intersect?

Born Of No WomanBorn of No Woman by Franck Bouysse, translated by Lara Vergnaud (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

Nineteenth-century rural France. Before he is called to bless the body of a woman at the nearby asylum, Father Gabriel receives a strange, troubling confession: hidden under the woman’s dress he will find the notebooks in which she confided the abuses she suffered and the twisted motivations behind them.

And so Rose’s terrible story comes to light: sold as a teenage girl to a rich man, hidden away in a old manor house deep in the woods and caught in a perverse web, manipulated by those society considers her betters.

A girl whose only escape is to capture her life – in all its devastation and hope – in the pages of her diary…

Recently finished

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (Little Brown)

The Writer’s Cats by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson (Gallic Books)

The Bride Price by Buchi Emecheta 

Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout (Viking)

What Cathy (will) Read Next

Liberty TerraceLiberty Terrace by Madeleine D’Arcy (eARC, Doire Press)

Set in a fictional area of Cork City from 2016-2020, Liberty Terrace captures the highs and lows of everyday life from both before and during the Covid-19 pandemic, prompting readers to consider what it means to be human and to live within a wider community.

A former solicitor with experience as a Census Enumerator in 2016, Cork native Madeleine D’Arcy took inspiration from the Irish Census originally scheduled in April 2021 but now postponed until 2022 for Liberty Terrace. D’Arcy has created a rich tapestry of stories all set in and around the fictional street; the residents of Liberty Terrace come and go over the years –their lives ebbing and flowing around each other in ways that are sometimes funny, sometimes dark and often both.

The cast of characters includes retired Garda Superintendent Deckie Google, a young homeless squatter, the mother of an autistic child working part-time as a Census Enumerator, the dysfunctional Callinan family, an ageing rock star, a trio of ladies who visit a faith healer, a philandering husband, as well as a surprising number of cats and dogs.