Book: My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

Straight away this reminded me of Where the Crawdads Sing although this is mercifully short at under 200 pages.

For most of the book, Lucy Barton is in the hospital while the doctors diagnose her illness. We know she is married with 2 kids and as she is in hospital for some time, is running out of visitors. Until the estranged mum pops up and stays a while. Through this, we go back and learn how she is estranged from her parents, her childhood, and how she came to live in New York and be a writer.

The book is about mums and daughters and Elizabeth Strout comes from the Anne Tyler school of character descriptions. For sure I’ll be reading more.

I’d accidentally reserved the follow-up book and had to take that back to borrow this one first. Both are constantly on reserve so perhaps it has been recommended somewhere as it had been for me.

A big seller, my copy even has a fancy cut-out cover.