Oh, William! by Elizabeth Strout

 

Oh, William! by Elizabeth Strout.

Published 21st October 2021 by Viking.

From the cover of the book:

The Pulitzer Prize-winning, Booker-longlisted, bestselling author returns to her beloved heroine Lucy Barton in a luminous novel about love, loss, and the family secrets that can erupt and bewilder us at any point in life.

Lucy Barton is a successful writer living in New York, navigating the second half of her life as a recent widow and parent to two adult daughters. A surprise encounter leads her to reconnect with William, her first husband - and long time, on-again-off-again friend and confidante. Recalling their college years, the birth of their daughters, the painful dissolution of their marriage, and the lives they built with other people, Strout weaves a portrait, stunning in its subtlety, of a tender, complex, decades-long partnership.

Oh William! captures the joy and sorrow of watching children grow up and start families of their own; of discovering family secrets, late in life, that alter everything we think we know about those closest to us; and the way people live and love, against all odds. At the heart of this story is the unforgettable, indomitable voice of Lucy Barton, who once again offers a profound, lasting reflection on the mystery of existence. 'This is the way of life,' Lucy says. 'The many things we do not know until it is too late.'

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Time to reconnect with the incredible Lucy Barton in Oh, William! the highly anticipated sequel to My Name is Lucy Barton. Lucy is now some years older than the young woman looking back on her dysfunctional childhood and reflecting on the direction life has taken her in the first book. She currently finds herself at another turning point in her life, facing widowhood after the death of her beloved second husband, David. Her daughters are grown, and she is on friendly terms with their father, her first husband William, who is now on his third marriage to a much younger woman.

When William discovers something shocking about his own family history, it is Lucy he turns to as friend and confidante, and they become closer as he enters a rough patch in his latest marriage. Their new intimacy has them re-examining their own troubled marriage, reaching an understanding about many of the things that came between them, and finding a way to move on from the hurt of the past.

As in the first book, it is Lucy who is our narrator through the emotional events that play out in Oh, William!. Having previously left her at rather a sad time, unsure whether she would be alright after everything she had been through, it was a joy to know that she had actually met a man who could love her as she deserved in David - but it is not long before his loss brings her to a crossroads once more, unsure about what the future holds. 

William has remained a fixture in Lucy's life. mostly through their interactions as parents to their daughters, but in many ways the sporadic friendship they have fallen into often reminds Lucy of how emotionally immature William can be and why their marriage was unsuccessful. It is William's exploration of his own past that brings them back together, and sends them on a road trip that coincidentally allows them to work through many of the issues that broke them apart years ago. There are moments of anger, silent brooding, recrimination and deliberate hurtfulness thrown up in their conversations, particularly around David's inability to accept responsibility for his actions, but there are also flashes of great tenderness as they reminisce about the happy times they spent together as a family unit with their daughters, and instances when they acknowledge they once had a good thing going.

Through Lucy's eyes we see William struggling with his family history, and although it is this that drives the story for the most part, his emotional journey also allows Lucy to reconcile many of her own deep-seated anxieties as the balance of their relationship shifts. She comes to a realisation that she is not quite as invisible as she has always thought herself to be, that her actions do have an effect on others, that the fiction she has created about her relationship with her own mother is not based on reality, and most poignantly that she is worthy of the love she receives. In many ways, this is Lucy's coming of age story, as she finally finds the strength to take whatever the future holds on her own terms.

This book runs on seamlessly from My Name is Lucy Barton, despite the significant jump forward in time, as this is still the Lucy we know and love so well. You really do need to have read the first book before embarking on this one, as Lucy refers to what we learned in that book about her distressing upbringing, the significant time her mother appeared back in her life, and the course of her marriage to William in frequent asides throughout this text, with endearing conversational comments like "as I have told you before" - so you will be at a loss for much of this story if you don't know what happened to Lucy before the events of this sequel. 

I was a bit concerned that I would not love this book as much as the first one, but if anything, I found it much more rewarding. There is something more satisfyingly mature about this one in the way Lucy grows as a person, realising that she is more capable than she thought, and I really enjoyed how Strout cleverly uses Lucy's own writing as a story device to fill-in William's side of the tale too - no spoilers, you will know the golden moment when you read it. 

Heart-breaking and heart-warming in equal measure, this is a book that displays all Strout's formidable writing talents in one delicious literary morsel - an absolute must read if you are a fan of her wonderful books!

Oh, William! is available to buy now in hardcover, ebook and audio formats from your favourite book retailer.

Thank you to Viking for sending me a proof f this book in return for an honest review, and for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the author:

Elizabeth Strout is the author of the New York Times bestseller Olive Kitteridge, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize; the national bestseller Abide with Me; and Amy and Isabelle, winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in London. She lives in Maine and New York City.