Oh, William! - Elizabeth Strout

In the last few years, Elizabeth Strout quietly worked her way onto my short list of favorite authors, something I really didn’t see coming when I first picked up The Burgess Boys back in 2013. But I found that novel to be so stunning in its insights into the human condition that I’ve read each of Strout’s subsequent novels almost as soon as they are published. Thanks to the HBO series and, of course, to the fact that Olive Kitteridge won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2009, Strout is probably still best known for having created such a memorable a character as Olive. But as this third Lucy Barton novel proves, Olive now has some pretty stiff competition when it comes to most memorable Elizabeth Strout character.

Lucy Barton was married to William Gerhardt, her first husband for almost twenty years — for eleven of those years she was officially Lucy Gerhardt, but after William’s mother died Lucy had her surname legally changed back to Barton because being “Lucy Gerhardt” just never had felt right to her. Lucy and William have two grown daughters, and for reasons she can’t explain even to herself, Lucy and William have become quite friendly again since the death of Lucy’s second husband a year earlier. Oh, William! is William’s story as seen through the eyes of Lucy, who is a frank narrator of what she observes with her own eyes and how the changes in her ex-husband, who is now 71 years old, make her feel about him, herself, and who they were together. 

Much of William and Lucy’s story is told in flashback, but it is what happens in real time that makes Oh, William! such a moving story. Over the course of the novel, William learns several things about his family history that will leave him wondering if he ever really knew who his mother was or even whom he really is. He is so stunned by some of the revelations that he struggles even to consider them for long through his newly opened eyes. Fascinating as William’s reaction to all of this is, however, it is what Lucy learns about herself and her relationship to this new version of William that most readers are likely to remember longest. Suddenly, William, her former protector and social-mentor, needs and depends on her more than she needs him. So when she quietly says to herself “Oh, William!” it is only because she feels sorry for him in his present state, and not to express any real fondness for the father of her two daughters. Now, she remembers why she walked out on him all those years ago. 

Bottom Line: Oh, William! is a wonderful character study that admirably extends the Lucy Barton saga. Fans of the previous Lucy Barton books will not want to miss this because Elizabeth Strout has done it again. Highly recommended. 

Elizabeth Strout