Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
“Truly, it is as if I do not exist, I guess is the closest thing I can say. I mean I do not exist in the world. It could be as simple as the fact that we had no mirrors in our house when I was growing up except for a very small one high above the bathroom sink. I really do not know what I mean, except to say that on some very fundamental level, I feel invisible in the world.”
I adore Elizabeth Strout. She simply does not disappoint. Her characters are so real, so three-dimensional and textured and layered and flawed and yet perfect. Her writing is so simple, so profound and so quiet. Her writing and story in this book felt like cotton to me, it felt like it was holding me and being so very gentle with me.
“Whenever I don’t know what to do, I watch what I am doing.”
I loved the two previous Lucy Barton books so I was excited to have more of her. This one is about William, her ex-husband as he navigates some major challenges in his life and Lucy is there to support, be a witness and be a friend to him. They are both old and the interactions of the two was very interesting to read.
“But I thought: It’s odd, because on one hand I think I am invisible, but on the other I know what it is like to be marked as separate from society, only in my case no one knows it when they see me.”
But the best part of the book, for me, was not what happened or the other characters but Lucy herself and the way she thinks, the way she processes the world around her and the way she feels in the world. Her observations about other people says so much about her and how she is in the world.
“I thought about Lois Bubar. I thought how she seemed healthy; I mean she seemed inside herself, as I have said, in a way that was comfortable.”
I loved every single moment I spent with this book and I cannot wait to read more of Elizabeth Strout’s books.
with gratitude to netgalley and Random House Publishing Group for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review
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