Tag Archives: contemporary fiction

#BookReview ‘A Passionate Man’ by Joanna Trollope #familysaga #contemporary

4 Replies

I started A Passionate Man by Joanna Trollope wondering about the identity of the man in the title, and finished it not being entirely sure. There are three men in the story who could fit the label and although I enjoyed the book I finished it feeling incomplete. Joanna TrollopeJoanna Trollope is so good at exploring the experiences faced by couples and families, relationship challenges are emotionally similar despite differences in the ages of the people involved, class, geography, decade or century. In A Passionate Man, published in 1990, she deals with a seemingly happy couple whose lives are rent apart by the death of a parent and the unexpected interest of an amorous colleague. Trollope’s characters are middle class, doctor Archie and teacher Liza Logan live a comfortable life in a covetable house in a Hampshire village. But all is not beautiful in this beautiful setting. A plan to build house on a field causes ruptures between friends and neighbours, locally-born workers struggle to live where they grew up while the elderly die quietly in loneliness. The cosy life of the Logans begins to fracture.
As husband and wife become focussed on their own emotions and needs, the divisions grow to the degree that their three children notice the undercurrents. Grief of a parent is an unexpectedly intense, disorientating experience which makes one question one’s own life, achievements, mistakes, dreams and longings. Trouble can often follow. I found myself becoming irritated by both Archie and Liza, rather than sympathetic, as each struggles with the consequences of their own actions and the other’s. As the family’s fractures deepen to chasms, Trollope’s portrayal of the children however is excellent.
I was left feeling that the ending is rather rushed and convenient and that ‘passionate’ is not the most appropriate adjective. Not my favourite Trollope novel.

Here are my reviews of other Trollope novels:-
A VILLAGE AFFAIR
MUM & DAD
THE CHOIR
THE RECTOR’S WIFE

If you like this, try:-
‘In the Midst of Winter’ by Isabel Allende
‘The Marriage Plot’ by Jeffrey Eugenides
‘In Another Life’ by Julie Christine Johnson

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview A PASSIONATE MAN by Joanna Trollope https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-6KA via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Andrew Taylor

#BookReview ‘The Choir’ by Joanna Trollope #familysaga #rereading

5 Replies

The Choir was the first book by Joanna Trollope that I read, in 1988, and the first published under her own name. Prior to that, she had written historical novels as Caroline Harvey. After reading and enjoying Mum & Dad in 2020, I decided to revisit my old Trollope paperbacks. Joanna TrollopeI never liked the phrase ‘aga saga,’ coined to describe Trollope’s style of novel – community-based, middle class, family trauma, forbidden romance – finding it over-simplistic and belittling of Trollope’s work. The Choir is about a limited time period in the life of a small community, the cathedral and choir school at Aldminster, and what happens when the stonework begins to crumble. Money must be found or saved, cuts must be made, unthinkable changes are considered. This is a story of small-world politics, the interaction of personalities domineering, clever, manipulative, naïve, well-meaning, defeated.
When the Dean of Aldminster Cathedral investigates the building’s dodgy lighting system, he finds stone erosion that will cost a fortune to fix. He first considers sell the headmaster’s magnificent listed house to the council for use as a community centre. There are social divisions within the town and the cathedral’s quarter is seen by some as superior and unwelcoming, a new social centre may help redress the balance. When the true cost of the renovation becomes apparent, Dean Hugh Cavendish considers closing the cathedral’s choir. The latter idea is abhorrent to headmaster Alexander Troy and organist Leo Beckford. Personalities ally themselves to one side of the argument or the other. Caught in the middle is chorister Henry Ashworth whose absent father lives in Saudi Arabia and whose mother Sally is dallying on the edge of an affair. Trollope is excellent at drawing this cast of characters, each fully rounded, each of which is engaging even when they are being awful. Like Ianthe, the Dean’s rebellious daughter, who fancies herself in love with Leo despite a lack of encouragement from him.
When a money-raising scheme is suggested that involves some of the Cathedral Close’s most unlikely characters, it is expected to fail. Henry becomes an unexpected star. One event leads to another, decisions must be made, marriages falter and professional courtesies are forgotten. In this small community, they all know each other’s business, politics becomes all-consuming; the finances of the cathedral, its place in the town, the accessibility of the choir to children from less advantaged families, and the rivalry around the town council boardroom table.

Joanna Trollope

My original copy of ‘The Choir’

This novel is 35 years old but that doesn’t matter. I enjoyed it immensely.

Read my reviews of other novels by Joanna Trollope:-
A PASSIONATE MAN
A VILLAGE AFFAIR
MUM & DAD
THE RECTOR’S WIFE

If you like this, try:-
‘A Single Thread’ by Tracy Chevalier
‘The Gustav Sonata’ by Rose Tremain
‘We Are Water’ by Wally Lamb

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE CHOIR by Joanna Trollope https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-68K via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Sebastian Barry

#BookReview ‘Lucy by the Sea’ by Elizabeth Strout @LizStrout #contemporary

9 Replies

Elizabeth Strout never writes a bad novel. When I started to read Lucy by the Sea, her latest, I was taken aback to find it is set during the pandemic; something I have avoided. But I was soon immersed in the life of Lucy Barton and her relocation from New York to a small seaside town in Maine. Elizabeth StroutMy misgivings about lockdown were reduced because this is a Strout novel. She doesn’t write about the pandemic – apart from occasional mentions of masks and vaccines – she writes about people. This is a finely-judged story about ageing, about grief [new and long-lived], about secrets within families and self-denial of difficult truths. Lucy moves into a large house outside the town of Crosby, not because she planned it, but because her ex-husband William persuades her it will be safer than the city. There they discover new and old acquaintances and reacquaint themselves with each other. William is recently separated; Lucy was widowed a year earlier. Both feel their age and are anxious about the subtle changes, but don’t like admitting it to themselves or anyone else.
Through Lucy’s eyes as she reflects on her own life, and that of her children and family, we see how childhood poverty never leaves you even if you leave that poverty behind. How marriage turbulence is sometimes negotiable, and sometimes terminal. How education saved her but didn’t save her sister or brother, and how she was for years blind to that inequality. It is thought-provoking stuff. Honest. Painful. It makes you consider your own life and how you see it through blinkers gained through your personal experience.
Strout’s novels are all inter-twined through character and place, but always with a light touch. If this is the first Strout book you pick up, please read it. This is not a series, there is no first and last book to be read in order. It is an ensemble. If it were theatrical, it would be a repertory company. The pandemic-forced move to Crosby takes Lucy out of her comfort zone, away from friends, and she rubs shoulders with people she wouldn’t normally meet. As we see Lucy age from novel to novel, Lucy by the Sea highlights her new vulnerability and anxiety as she and William work out how to handle the awkward elements of getting old.
This is a more political novel than any of Strout’s previous work. The pandemic setting makes this inevitable. There is a shadow of mask v anti-mask, resident v incomer, plus brief mentions of George Floyd and storming of the Capitol on January 6. But this is not overt and always put into Lucy’s context. Strout places her characters in a time of disruption, fear and death. For everyone who lived through it, the surreal isolation forced by pandemic lockdown was an opportunity for consideration, re-evaluation and truth. A gift for a novelist with the powers of Elizabeth Strout.
Excellent.

Read my reviews of these other books by Elizabeth Strout:-
AMY & ISABELLE
ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE
MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON
OH WILLIAM!
OLIVE KITTERIDGE
OLIVE, AGAIN
TELL ME EVERYTHING

If you like this, try:-
‘Curtain Call’ by Anthony Quinn
‘A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom’ by John Boyne
‘Shrines of Gaiety’ by Kate Atkinson

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview LUCY BY THE SEA by Elizabeth Strout @LizStrout https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-65D via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Frances Brody

#BookReview ‘Listening Still’ by Anne Griffin #Irish #contemporary

1 Reply

When All is Said the debut novel by Anne Griffin was one of my favourite books of 2019. Listening Still is Irish writer Griffin’s second novel. It focusses on Jeanie Masterson, an undertaker who can hear the last words of the newly deceased. She finds herself a juggler of truth, obfuscations and lies as she tries to balance her commitment to the dead person to pass on a message to the ones left behind, with her own emotional need to soften harsh words that may hurt the recipient. This shaky balance of truth and lies is the theme of the book set in the small community of Kilcross. Anne GriffinIt took me a while to get into this book, to care. Unlike Maurice Hannigan in When All is Said who is a character whose head and being I immediately slipped into, I found Jeanie more difficult to reach and less sympathetic. Starting with the shock announcement by Jeanie’s parents that they are retiring and leaving her and husband Niall to run the family undertakers, the novel quickly widens out to encompass Jeanie’s childhood and teenage years and how she came to terms with her unusual gift. This return to the past became frustrating as I wanted to hear more about the voices of the dead and their stories, rather than the ups and downs of Jeanie’s love life. My fault, I was hoping for a community ensemble story in the style of Marilynne Robinson and Elizabeth Strout.
Jeanie’s difficulties with taking over the family firm are inextricably linked to her relationship with her husband. In order to move forward, something has to give. But what? As she seeks the answers, Jeanie’s travels take her to London, Norway and France. I particularly enjoyed the section with Marielle and Lucien. Seventy-five year old Marielle can also hear the dead. Her neighbour and boyfriend Lucien digs graves for Marielle’s clients while rescuing the pieces of furniture she rejects, he stashes them in a shed knowing that she will regret throwing them away.
After the brilliance of When All is Said, perhaps my expectations of a second novel were unrealistically high. Yes I was disappointed but this is still is a well-written, enjoyable novel by an author who is on my to-watch list. And it left me thinking of that old chestnut – can a well-meant lie hurt more than the difficult truth?

Read my review of WHEN ALL IS SAID, also by Anne Griffin.

If you like this, try:-
‘Unsettled Ground’ by Claire Fuller
‘Elizabeth is Missing’ by Emma Healey
‘Something to Hide’ by Deborah Moggach

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview LISTENING STILL by Anne Griffin #bookreview https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-67w via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North’ by Rachel Joyce

5 Replies

If you haven’t read the two previous books in this trilogy, please don’t start Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North by Rachel Joyce until you have. This novella can standalone but you will miss many references. It’s as delightfully funny and painfully sad as The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, and neatly completes the Fry story. It supplies the missing piece in the jigsaw, that hole in the middle. Rachel Joyce It is ten years since Maureen Fry’s husband Harold returned home from his walking adventure in search of old friend, Queenie. Maureen has a minor presence in the first two novels, so this is her painfully supressed story about unbearable grief. Not always a sympathetic character, Maureen has always felt different. Until she met Harold, she felt as if she were ‘being measured against something she didn’t understand and would never get right.’ Always lacking in self-confidence, Maureen struggled first after the death of their son David and later to accept Harold’s quest to see Queenie one last time. This book tells of Maureen’s quest, to find herself.
Deeply emotional and simply written, this is about the longevity of grief and how it can permeate every minute of your day. The depth of Joyce’s understanding of human nature, the poetically simple language and the parallel rather than sequential storytelling reminds me of Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy Barton novels.
There are some ‘chuckle out loud’ moments such as the scene with the assistant in a diner. Like Harold, Maureen meets people on her winter journey who surprise her in positive and darker ways. But principally it is about Maureen learning the confidence to accept – and love – herself as she is, to accept each person as an individual and to understand that David was his own person too. She cannot mould the real person David was into one that fits her memory of him.
A quick read, it can be read in one sitting, but for all its brevity it packs a punch. I was still thinking about it days after I read the last page, always a good sign.

Read my reviews of these other novels by Rachel Joyce:-
MISS BENSON’S BEETLE
PERFECT
THE LOVE SONG OF MISS QUEENIE HENNESSY

And read here the first paragraph of THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY

If you like this, try:-
‘The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes’ by Anna McPartlin
‘The Hoarder’ by Jess Kid
‘The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman’ by Julietta Henderson

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview MAUREEN FRY AND THE ANGEL OF THE NORTH by Rachel Joyce https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-5Td via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-
Kiran Millwood Hargrave

#BookReview ‘An Unfamiliar Landscape’ by Amanda Huggins @troutiemcfish #shortstories

11 Replies

An Unfamiliar Landscape, the new short story collection by Amanda Huggins, is made for dipping in and out of, comprising longer reads with satisfying snappy flash fiction. There is something in every story that made me think, ‘that’s so right,’ or ‘that happened to me,’ or ‘I know how that feels.’ That’s why everyone should read her work. Amanda HugginsThe landscape changes from story to story, from Huggins’ native Yorkshire via Paris and London to Spain and Japan. Each story offers a glimpse of a relationship, an insight into the emotions of love, hope, longing, loss, betrayal, regret and grief. She writes about everyone’s emotions, her stories seem familiar, so well-worn and lived-in they must be true.
‘Ten of Hearts’ is a short, hard-hitting story about magic, about vulnerability, gullibility and sleight of hand. Once bitten, it is difficult to move to a new relationship but often too easy. A previous version of this story was broadcast on BBC Radio Leeds in 2021.
In ‘Eating Unobserved,’ Marnie rents an apartment in Paris where she will work on her next book. Seduced by the beauty of the apartment and the simple delight of the food, she spends her time alone. Until one dark night she sees a light on in an apartment opposite, a man unpacks groceries and pours a glass of wine. For a few nights she watches him, and then grows bolder.
Sam and Isla are in the kitchen in ‘In the Time it Takes to Make a Risotto.’ He is chopping vegetables and she is reading headlines off her phone, reciting his horoscope, sharing crossword clues. As he cooks, her mind returns to the affair she had with his best friend, the lies she has told and secrets kept. As the risotto cooks, the atmosphere tightens with words unspoken.
In other stories, a teenage daughter challenges her father; a tourist visits a war grave on behalf of a friend; a young waiter delivers a room service tray to an older female guest.
Themes recur. Food, the eating and drinking of; the freeing sensation of being somewhere foreign, somewhere that is not home; the assumptions made on first meetings and the subsequent challenging of those perceptions; the making of repeat mistakes; and the time it takes to grieve, both for loved ones, and for chances lost or misused.
Excellent.

Read my reviews of other work by Amanda Huggins:-
Novellas
ALL OUR SQUANDERED BEAUTY
CROSSING THE LINES
THE BLUE OF YOU
Short stories
BRIGHTLY COLOURED HORSES
EACH OF US A PETAL
SCRATCHED ENAMEL HEART
SEPARATED FROM THE SEA
Poetry
THE COLLECTIVE NOUNS FOR BIRDS

If you like this, try:-
‘The Story’ by Victoria Hislop
‘Yuki Chan in Bronte Country’ by Mick Jackson
‘Big Sky’ by Kate Atkinson

And if you’d like to share a link, try:
#BookReview AN UNFAMILIAR LANDSCAPE by Amanda Huggins @troutiemcfish https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5Qr via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘French Braid’ by Anne Tyler #contemporary #family

7 Replies

Anne Tyler writes about everyday relationships with a sharp eye and a silken pen, choosing subjects which to people who have never read her may appear boring or worthless. Her books are never boring. French Braid, her 24th novel is, like all the others, about people, individuals and their families, ordinary people who become so familiar they could be real. Anne TylerWe first meet college students Serena and James, on the train returning to Baltimore from a Thanksgiving visit to James’s parents in Philadelphia. They’re in love and think they know each other well but this visit has highlighted differences in their experience of family and childhood and the expectations each has of how their own family will be in the future. Not all families are alike, they discover. After this shortish section, Tyler settles into the main story of Mercy and Robin – Serena’s grandparents – and their three children Alice, Lily and David through births, marriages and deaths from the 1950s to today.
The Garretts think themselves an awkward family, aware they’re not perfect – as Robin thinks when preparing for his and Mercy’s fiftieth wedding anniversary party, ‘Oh, the lengths this family would go to so as not to spoil the picture of how things were supposed to be!’ But in fact they’re being themselves, getting along together in the way that suits them, dealing with what life throws at them.
There’s a brief scene in the kitchen between sisters Alice and Lily as the family gathers at Easter to meet David’s new friend, Greta. They’re setting out food for lunch when their mis-communications and misunderstandings are laid bare. Hilarious lines – ‘Was bottled mayonnaise not a good thing?’ – are typical Tyler and made me smile. It’s a classic way of showing how two sisters can be so unalike but still rub along together. Tyler has such a deceptively simple way with words, summarising sprawling emotions so concisely that I want to write it down to enjoy again later.
Tyler examines how each family finds its own way through life. Not all siblings are best friends, not all spouses live in each other’s pockets. There is no right way or wrong way of being a family. Close-knit families may find looser-knit families cold or odd, but may in turn themselves seem claustrophobic and cliquey to outsiders. Neither is odd, simply different. Everyone muddles through the best they can. The trick to being part of a family, in Tyler’s world, is to adapt. Allow individuals to be themselves and accept annoying traits, awkward memories and uncomfortable truths along with the happy memories and shared laughter as part of a family’s mosaic.

Read my reviews of these other books by Anne Tyler:-
A SPOOL OF BLUE THREAD
CLOCK DANCE
LADDER OF YEARS
REDHEAD BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD
THREE DAYS IN JUNE
VINEGAR GIRL

And read the #FirstPara of:-
DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT 
BACK WHEN WE WERE GROWN UPS

If you like this, try:-
‘At Mrs Lippincote’s’ by Elizabeth Taylor
‘The Goldfinch’ by Donna Tartt
‘The Pull of the Stars’ by Emma Donoghue

And if you’d like to share a link:
#BookReview FRENCH BRAID by Anne Tyler https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5PV via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Companion Piece’ by Ali Smith #SeasonalQuartet #contemporary

5 Replies

Companion Piece by Ali Smith is about truth, the telling of stories, real stories, fake stories, fairy stories, perceived truth and real truth, and how language and data can be used and abused. Smith tackles some of the biggest issues facing society today, not so much providing answers but making us ask questions about life and the modern concept of ‘truth.’ A ‘companion’ novella to Smith’s lockdown-themed Seasonal Quartet, Companion Piece sings from the beginning. Ali Smith Twining together present and past stories, two motifs run throughout. ‘Curfew,’ the idea of restriction of physical movement, on access and egress, the feeling of being constrained and the invasion of our space. And ‘curlew’, the freedom of nature, the bird’s odd-shaped bill, a reminder that there is room in nature for things that don’t quite fit the norm, the ever presence of wildlife whatever happens in the human world, the familiar pattern of a bird’s day, of nature’s life cycle and therefore also of ours.
Artist Sandy is struggling during lockdown to distance-visit her sick father who is in hospital. She must stay isolated and free of the virus so she doesn’t prejudice his health and is accompanied only by Shep, her father’s dog. Into this closed world comes Martina, an acquaintance from university many decades since, who telephones with an odd tale concerning an incident at border control when she recently returned to the UK with the Boothby lock (a medieval artefact for which Martina is responsible). Held in an immigration detention room, she hears (or imagine she hears) a mysterious message – ‘Curlew or curfew.’ Martina wants Sandy’s advice to decipher the message, as Sandy is good at words. Sandy, who barely remembers Martina, tries to help while simultaneously trying to end the call. There are flashbacks to their university days, to Sandy’s childhood.
Then Sandy’s peaceful isolation is shattered by the arrival on her doorstep of Martina’s twin daughters, Lea and Eden, whose speech is littered with text-speak abbreviations. They dismiss Sandy’s concerns about covid distancing and accuse her of upsetting their mother who is acting strangely and is changing information about historical artefacts in the digital database at work.
The second story (whether it is told by Sandy is unclear, like many things in this book) set in another pandemic, this time the Black Death. An unnamed young girl, a blacksmith’s apprentice, is lying in a ditch after being attacked by men. There she meets a curlew chick, an ungainly beautiful bird she begins to care for. As people around her die of plague, she remembers the stories told to her by the blacksmith Ann Shaklock and these help her to survive.
Any novel by such an experimental writer as Smith needs to be read with a loosening of expectations, acceptance of the abandonment of normal commercial fiction norms. Passages are beautifully written but incomprehensible, others are simple and sweet, some made me laugh out loud. Punctuation, speech marks, forget about them all and sink into the story of Sandy the artist who paints words layered on top of words.
Don’t expect answers at the end. As Sandy says, ‘A story is never an answer. A story is always a question.’ It is a plea for us all to ask more questions, to not simply believe what we are told but to analyse and strip back stories in order to separate fact from fiction, fake news from truth.

Click the title to read my reviews of other books by Ali Smith:-
AUTUMN #1SEASONALQUARTET
WINTER #2SEASONALQUARTET
SPRING #3SEASONALQUARTET
SUMMER #4SEASONALQUARTET
HOW TO BE BOTH

If you like this, try:-
‘In the Midst of Winter’ by Isabel Allende
‘Blow Your House Down’ by Pat Barker
‘New Boy’ by Tracy Chevalier

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview COMPANION PIECE by Ali Smith https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5PB via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Pod’ by @LalinePaull #contemporary

3 Replies

Pod by Laline Paull is an environmental allegory for the ocean today, for the state of the world, the climate and for humanity. The topics are huge. Man’s misuse of the ocean and its creatures. Migration and our treatment of refugees who are different from us. Violence against women. Drug addiction. Selfishness and the betrayal of trust and respect for others. The connections of family and the meaning of home. It reminded me of Watership Down, not read since childhood but which made a lasting impression on me. Laline PaullThere are several narratives. The main voice is Ea, a spinner longi dolphin whose inability to hear the music of the ocean prevents her from spinning beautifully. Unable to take part in the annual Exodus ritual, she feels a failure. When tragedy happens in her small pod, she flees and finds herself alone in the ‘vast’. When she joins a huge pod of bigger bottlenose tursiops dolphins, Ea finds a society completely alien to the world she knows. The First Alliance is ruled by lord Ku who, with his second in command lord Split, maintains a strict structure of order using the vira military officers. Devi, first wife and head of Ku’s harem, is a bully who enjoys her power and the hold she has over the co-wives. She plots against rivals and controls the harem’s access to sarpa, the small fish which when eaten have a calming, hallucinogenic effect.
Other voices in Pod include a misplaced humphead wrasse, separated from his kind, who switches gender. A refugee fugu fish who re-starts her cleaning station business in a new unfamiliar home. A prophetic rorqual baleen whale who sings a warning of doom. Google, a dolphin trained, exploited and mis-treated by the military, used by humans as an attack weapon.
And hovering above them all are the anthrops, the humans, recognisable by the noise from their boats and the plastic pollution which the dolphins call ‘moult’. The brutality and cruelty, sometimes unthinking sometimes conscious and glorifying, of man to animals in this book is shaming. Paull doesn’t withhold the brutality of nature, the fights, the sex, the survival of the fittest, the expulsion of the weak who it is assumed will soon die. But there is hope too, the idea that through adaptation, a group can fight to survive. That the oppressed can gain power and strength by combining together.
Quickly read, this book is emotional, shocking and the parallels with the human race are thought-provoking. It has stayed with me long since finishing it.

Read my review of Laline Paull’s climate change thriller, THE ICE.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Horseman’ by Tim Pears #1WESTCOUNTRYTRILOGY
‘A Dangerous Business’ by Jane Smiley
‘The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly’ by Sun-Mi Hwang

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview POD by @LalinePaull https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5Dv via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Oh William!’ by Elizabeth Strout @LizStrout #contemporary

7 Replies

What a gifted writer Elizabeth Strout is. Oh William! sees the return of Lucy Barton as she meets again her first husband, William, and reflects on love, loss, friendship and the fact that life can seem bewildering. Lucy’s voice is so real it seemed as if we were having a real conversation, face-to-face. Elizabeth StroutThis is the stream-of-consciousness story – complete with ums, ahs, meanderings and distractions – of a few months in Lucy’s life, after the death of her second husband David and when William’s latest wife, Estelle has just left him. Lucy and William were married for twenty years and have two daughters; that’s a lot of baggage. The connections that bind a married couple do not disappear after they are divorced, memories and experiences are inextricably linked. William, now 71, came home one day to find the flat looking odd, with gaps where things should be, and a note from his wife Estelle saying she had moved out. As he explains to Lucy, now a successful writer in her sixties, what has happened, she relives the moment she also left William, how she felt at the time and how she feels now. She calls him Pillie, he calls her Button. They spend more time together and their daughters ask if they are getting back together. In fact, they are investigating a family secret recently revealed when William is given the gift of an ancestry records service. As they travel back into the past of William and of his mother, Catherine Cole, Lucy recalls her own childhood, the neglect, the poverty, and considers how this shaped who she is today.
Strout has written a short, elegant story with hidden depths that draw you in. She explores the affections, regrets, irritations and resentments of a couple, once married, now sort-of friends. They are an everyman couple who loved each other, who were at times thoughtless, cruel, unforgiving and impatient but now show moments of heart-stopping fondness. Lucy recounts the road trip undertaken into William’s past except it is also a journey into her own past as the revelations of someone else’s secrets shed new insight into her own desperately sad childhood.
A novel about human flaws that shows how it’s almost impossible to know ourselves as others see us, as we can never thoroughly know someone else.
This is a companion novel to My Name is Lucy Barton, the first ever book by Strout I read, but each novel can be read independently.

Read my reviews of these other books by Elizabeth Strout:-
AMY & ISABELLE
ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE
LUCY BY THE SEA
MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON
OLIVE KITTERIDGE
OLIVE, AGAIN
TELL ME EVERYTHING

If you like this, try:-
‘Mum & Dad’ by Joanna Trollope
‘A Little Life’ by Hanya Yanagihara
‘In Another Life’ by Julie Christine Johnson

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview OH WILLLIAM! by Elizabeth Strout @LizStrout https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5pB via @SandraDanby