Oh William!: Book summary and reviews of Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout

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Cathryn Conroy

A Subtle but Viscerally Insightful Look at One Woman's Innermost Thoughts
This is the rarest of books. I felt myself becoming the main character. The writing is so perfect, so brilliant, so masterful that I, the reader, became Lucy Barton. It was weird. I could feel it happening.

Oh yes, there is a reason Elizabeth Strout is one of my top three favorite writers. (Who can choose one favorite writer? It's like choosing a favorite child!) The sheer genius of this is that Lucy Barton's life is the polar opposite of my own life—yet, I still felt like I was inhabiting the character.

This is the third in the series about Lucy Barton, and you absolutely must read them in order beginning with "My Name Is Lucy Barton: A Novel" and then "Anything Is Possible: A Novel." In this book, Lucy is not only divorced from William, her first husband, but also she has been a widow for five years after her second husband, David, has died. William is almost 70 when the book opens, and is having a bit of a crisis. Since he and Lucy get along OK, he calls her. A lot. He then discovers something truly shocking about his deceased mother—the kind of thing that just turns your world upside down. He and Lucy take a road trip to Maine to try to figure out this life-changing development. While there, they also reveal much to each other about the secrets of their long-ago marriage, and Lucy learns much about herself.

That's the plot, such as it is, but this book is not plot-dependent. It is a story of self-revelation as Lucy begins to comprehend who she is and how pivotal events in her past shaped her personality. It's an intimate look at one woman's deepest, uncensored thoughts. Reading this book almost feels like surreptitiously reading another's journal and hoping you don't get caught in the act.

The literary genius of the Lucy Barton trilogy is how different each book is. The first is a novel. The second is interrelated short stories that together form a novel. And this third book is a memoir that becomes a novel.

This beautifully written book is a subtle but viscerally insightful look at one woman's soul and the meaning of her life written by a master of American literature.

Susan W.

Read more than once
Elizabeth Strout has packed so much life and wisdom into this spare novel, it will take me more than one reading to digest all it contains. Her characters are so human, so flawed, so seeking.
"When does a person actually 'choose' anything?" William asks Lucy. A succinct summary of the book, which is filled with deep examinations of what life contains for some people.
William's adultery has a devastating effect on Lucy and her description of what she felt is faultless:

A tulip stem snapped inside me. This is
what I felt.
It has stayed snapped, it never grew back.

Amazing book, amazing writer. I have a few more of hers lined up to be read.

Cloggie Downunder

another powerful read
Oh William! is the third novel in the Amgash series by best-selling, Pulitzer Prize winning American author, Elizabeth Strout. Not long widowed and still very much grieving her second husband, David Abramson, Lucy Barton relates recent events in the life of her first husband, William Gerhardt.

Two life-changing things that occur in fairly short succession see her travelling with William to Maine to perhaps connect with a relative of whom William was, until recently, unaware. It’s a journey of many revelations, both about newly-discovered family, those already departed, each other and themselves.

Lucy’s narrative comes across as a little rambling, at first, but it soon becomes clear that all those casual asides, those frequently inserted anecdotes from earlier, are given to illustrate a certain point, a feeling, an opinion.

Musing on what she had with each husband, she tells the reader that even though “At times in our marriage I loathed him. I saw, with a kind of dull disc of dread in my chest, that with his pleasant distance, his mild expressions, he was unavailable”, William was her home, that she felt safe in his presence.

She does not talk much about David, noting what they had in common “It is hard to describe what it is like when one is raised in such isolation from the outside world. So we became each other’s home. But we— both of us felt this way—we felt that we were perched like birds on a telephone wire in New York City” and concluding that “David was a tremendous comfort to me.”

Strout gives her characters palpable emotions, wise words and insightful observations. When Lucy is unable to understand why William married her, a nothing, he tells her: “Lucy, I married you because you were filled with joy. You were just filled with joy. And when I finally realized what you came from—when we went to your house that day to meet your family and tell them we were getting married, Lucy, I almost died at what you came from. I had no idea that was what you came from. And I kept thinking, But how is she what she is? How could she come from this and have so much exuberance? …. There has never been anyone in the world like you. You steal people’s hearts, Lucy.”

Strout’s writing, both in style and subject matter, is reminiscent of Sebastian Barry with shades of Anne Tyler. Strout writes about ordinary people leading what they believe are ordinary lives (although there are definitely some quirky ones doing strange things amongst them) and does it with exquisite yet succinct prose. Another powerful read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Penguin UK Viking.

A. Knoll

Incomplete marriages
Quite simply, I found the story line boring. Incomplete romances, while interesting sidelines, are not compelling reading.

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