My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

​The plot of the story started from when Lucy was in the hosptial for three weeks with an undiagnosed illness following the removal of her appendix. During her stay in the hospital, her mother, who hasn’t spoken to Lucy for years, turned up to visited her and stayed for 5 days. 

The story was full of emotional substance. Lucy Barton grew up in a garage size house in the farmlands of Illinois with an unpleasant childhood.  She devoted all her energy to books and she managed to escaped away with her ex-husband William to New York city. Later on, she became a successful novelist. Despite her unpleasant childhood, she was craving her mother’s love and wished her mother can be more vocal to say ‘ I love you’ to her.

During her mother’s visit, they did a lot of small talks about the neghours in her poor neighhood. For instance, they  mentioned a character named ‘Mississippi Mary’, who and Evils were both from Tupelo. Mississippi and being described as  ‘rash’ to reflected her poor childhood.

One of the charters I liked in the book was Lucy’s artist friend Jeremy, who told her that in order to be a successful writer she would have to learn how to be ‘ruthless’. The other charter in the book I liked was Lucy’s writer friend, Sarah Payne. Sarah told Lucy that, "if you find yourself protecting anyone while you write this, you’re not doing it right.”  At the end, Lucy also decided to be ruthless and got out of her unhappy marriage even she has two daughters.

I like the novel is short around 200 pages only while it has many small chapters of different character’s stories.