“It is both a book of withholdings and a book of great openness and wisdom. It starts with the clean, solid structure and narrative distance of a fairy tale yet becomes more intimate and improvisational…. Strout is playing with form here, with ways to get at a story, yet nothing is tentative or haphazard. She is in supreme and magnificent command of this novel at all times.”
Random House Open House
With my editor Susan Kamil, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Random House, after a Q&A at the Random House OpenHouse. Wonderful conversation and to meet some of my readers! #RHopenhouse
January's LibraryReads Favorite
My Name Is Lucy Barton voted January's LibraryReads Favorite by American Librarians. Thank you, LibraryReads!
Publisher's Weekly: Tender and moving
“Strout’s tender and moving novel should be read slowly, to savor the depths beneath what at first seems a simple story of a mother-daughter reconciliation.…
This masterly novel’s message, made clear in the moving denouement, is that sometimes in order to express love, one has to forgive. ”
Kirkus: Fiction with the condensed power of poetry
“As in Olive Kittredge (2008), Strout peels back layers of denial and self-protective brusqueness to reveal the love that Lucy’s mother feels but cannot express.…
Fiction with the condensed power of poetry: Strout deepens her mastery with each new work, and her psychological acuity has never required improvement.”