Apparently I am in the minority, at least among my friends (both IRL and online) — I haven’t read either of Elizabeth Srout’s books featuring Lucy Barton: 2016’s My Name Is Lucy Barton or 2018’s Anything Is Possible. So when I began her eighth book, Oh William!, I lacked any familiarity with Lucy, a plainspoken woman who overcame a traumatic, impoverished childhood in Illinois and had become a successful writer. Apparently it isn’t necessary to have read the prior books, as there are recaps of Lucy’s history throughout Oh William!

As the book begins, Lucy is age 64 and is mourning the death of her second husband, but begins by saying “I would like to say a few things about my first husband, William.” William was the father of her two adult daughters, and Lucy left him after 20 years of his philandering. The two of them go on a trip to Maine and learn some surprising things about William’s family, while exploring the themes that the past is never truly past, trauma affects a person forever, and although people are essentially unknowable, it’s important to try to understand them.

Lucy and William come to realize that “all that crap” in their past is “part of the fabric of who we are.” I found it fascinating that although their marriage failed, William was the one person who made Lucy feel safe. It didn’t feel like a five star book, but it really is a good story, well written and thought-provoking. Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for providing a copy in exchange for my honest review. Four stars.

Lucy Barton, the main character in My Name is Lucy Barton and Anything is Possible, is back in Oh William!, an account of her relationship with her ex-husband. But as in her other novels, this becomes a reason to look back over her own life and how it intersected with her ex-husband's, how she got along with his mother, and culminating with him asking her to accompany him on a trip to visit the area his mother grew up in, in conditions that weren't too different from Lucy's own.

Elizabeth Strout writes movingly and so clearly about people that even though her novels are not really plot-based, they are a delight to read. This one is no exception. Lucy grew up in an impoverished household and she often reflects how that has formed who she is, she also thinks about the teacher who helped her and how she has never really felt at home anywhere, or even entirely visible. And her own idea of how she appears to others is challenged by William's comments about her over the course of their post-marriage relationship. Strout writes about ordinary lives better than anyone else.

This is the way of life: the many things we do not know until it is too late.

Elizabeth Strout absolutely saved the best for last with Oh William! I loved the 2 previous books, My Name is Lucy Barton and Anything is Possible - they were really a wonderfully told story, but Oh William! takes that story to a new level. At times it very much felt like I was sitting and listening to Strout... rather than reading it. Her prose is really brilliant, and she manages to insert an aside exactly as one would if you were sharing a cuppa and talking.

I wanted to "ration" my reading so this book would not end. And I highly recommend this entire series... and save the best for last!

I want to thank Random House and Netgalley for providing me an ARC of this book!

Strout creates such amazing characters, each authentic and raw in their own way.

Lucy Barton is amazing. She possesses a keen eye in recognizing what makes a person who they are, she’s open with likes and dislikes and she is so self aware it knocks your socks off. Her honesty is compelling. A quiet warrior without even realizing she is. She is so much goodness. Lucy Barton is endearing - truly a special spirit. Ruthless.

Title: Oh William!
Author: Elizabeth Strout
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 3.0

Lucy Barton is a writer, but her ex-husband, William, remains a hard man to read. William, she confesses, has always been a mystery to me. Another mystery is why the two have remained connected after all these years. They just are.

So Lucy is both surprised and not surprised when William asks her to join him on a trip to investigate a recently uncovered family secret—one of those secrets that rearrange everything we think we know about the people closest to us. What happens next is nothing less than another example of what Hilary Mantel has called Elizabeth Strout’s “perfect attunement to the human condition.” There are fears and insecurities, simple joys and acts of tenderness, and revelations about affairs and other spouses, parents and their children. On every page of this exquisite novel we learn more about the quiet forces that hold us together—even after we’ve grown apart.

It's possible I should just avoid reading literary fiction. I liked the voice in this—but I really didn’t like the character it belonged to. Lucy is whiny and selfish. William is even worse. And the plot, what there was of one, was lackluster and boring to me. Good writing, but the style just isn’t for me.

Elizabeth Strout is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Oh William! is her newest novel.

(Galley courtesy of Random House in exchange for an honest review.)

I found this to be quite an interesting read. I enjoyed to layout of the book as it was different from anything I had read previously. I thought Lucy was an interesting character & her relationship with her ex-husband, William, was very unique. Entertaining book about finding out about your genealogy & how it can lead you to some windy roads.

Oh William! By Elizabeth Strout

Elizabeth Strout is an author who feels more like a dear old friend, or that cousin you like to be seated next to at a wedding. Her writing is both accessible and complex, as are the characters she creates. Oh William! is the story of Lucy Barton as a woman who has divorced her cheating first husband, remarried, and lost her second to cancer. It is a family novel, examining the relationships between both parents, children, and their extended family, and it is a love story, though not a romance. As many of Strout’s books do, it is sprinkled with historical fact that shaped the lives of the people living through events… like the POW camps in Maine, but the characters of the novel. The result is characters so authentic that I found myself looking to see if I was reading memoir.

At the heart of the novel is the secrets kept by both William, the cheating husband with whom Lucy retains a lovely friendship, and recently widowed Lucy. The big secret that they investigate doesn’t feel any more important than the dozens of other revelations these characters give in this captivating book. Fans of Lucy Barton and Olive Kittredge will not be disappointed. Newcomers will be charmed by Lucy’s quirkiness. And everyone will be saying “Oh William!”

“People are lonely, is my point here. Many people can’t say to those they know well what it is they feel they might want to say.”

This book has a meditative voice, exploring the complexities and nuances of human relationships. Specifically, this is a book about marriage and love – how one doesn’t necessarily secure the other. At the book’s opening, Lucy’s second husband has died, but she’s thinking about her first marriage to William, the man she’s loved deeply and sort of hated. Lucy and William’s love story is one we’ve possibly heard before – two people who cling to each other as a force of stability and security. But neither have fully reckoned with the impact their respective childhoods and traumas have had on themselves. Because they’ve never fully dealt with their own shortcomings and insecurities, their marriage is unstable and the harder they cling, the more it slips away. In the end, Lucy leaves. Now, she’s revisiting all that led to the moment she left.

For all its shortfalls, the marriage had glittering moments of safety and joy. But Strout’s message seems clear: marriage is sufficiently more difficult if you rely on another person to fix you, to make you feel secure, and to give you what you need. In other words, Strout seems to indicate that marriages are most successful when those feelings come as a bonus not intended to fill a void. The book is a sort of teasing out of why the marriage ended, which requires looking at how it began. The love, however convoluted, never leaves but it isn’t always enough. It’s exquisitely written – perceptive and restrained while messy and raw, much like William and Lucy’s marriage.

Have you read this one? Have you read any of Strout’s other books?

I was provided this book for free in exchange for my honest opinion.

I love “Lucy Barton’s” writing.!

I started this book before realizing that it was part of a series. I stopped reading and immediately read My Name is Lucy Barton and Anything is Possible. I was so glad that I did. It really allowed me to become immersed in Lucy Barton’s life and the people of Amgash, Illinois.

I loved the characters in all of the books but this book mainly focuses on Lucy Barton and her ex-husband William. We learn how each of them have dealt with love and loss and life after marriage. I felt it was refreshing that these two people, who were married for 20 years, we’re able to still be decent to each other and even friends.

All of the books set in Amgash are character driven. No major action, drama or suspense but a beautiful story about life and following Lucy and William navigate through their lives.

—o h, w i l l i a m !—⁣
Last book that surprised you? ⁣
—⁣
I didn’t know what to expect from Oh William! I have read and loved a few of Elizabeth Strout’s books (though conveniently (/s) not any of the ones from this series) so when offered an advance copy of this, I jumped at the chance.⁣
—⁣
Oh William! follows Lucy Barton (featured in two previous Strout books) in the aftermath of her second husband’s death as she seeks refuge and security with her first husband, William, while he deals with his own complex family issues. ⁣
—⁣
The way the Strout can create and shape truly unique characters with such depth is staggering. Strout’s writing is refreshing - a bit conversational, straightforward but sneakily and sometimes staggeringly beautiful. Along with the characters and the writing, the plot is well paced, the relationships are beautifully dynamic and complex. ⁣
—⁣
I really loved this one. I wish I had read the previous books but was still able to be fully immersed in the characters and story without that previous context. It is good standing alone too. ⁣
—⁣
Thank you @randomhouse for the chance to read it. Oh William! is out. Go get it!⁣
—

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Oh William! tells the story of William as seen through the eyes of his ex-wife Lucy Barton. I didn't realize that this was the second book with Lucy Barton when I started reading it but the author makes multiple mentions to a previous story with the characters. This book is written as part diary, part stream of consciousness which was a bit strange to read. Certainly, rereading the description, I didn't feel like any of that was what I got out of this story. Maybe that says more about me than the author's story. Regardless, there was a lot of repetition with Lucy's phrases (I mean) and many stories that seemed to have no purpose other than the character randomly thinking of them. The story just kind of ended. It is a short quick read and the imagery is very well done however I didn't really get the point of the book.

"Throughout my marriage to William, I had had the image—and this was true even when Catherine was alive, and more so after she died—so often I had the private image of William and me as Hansel and Gretel, two small kids lost in the woods looking for the breadcrumbs that could lead us home.
This may sound like it contradicts my saying that the only home I ever had was with William, but in my mind they are both true and oddly do not go against each other. I am not sure why this is true, but it is. I suppose because being with Hansel—even if we were lost in the woods—made me feel safe."

--------------------------------------

"People are lonely, is my point here. Many people can’t say to those they know well what it is they feel they might want to say."

My Name is Lucy Barton (2016) had been a very successful novel for Elizabeth Strout. She had even written a followup, Anything is Possible, (2017) a collection of stories, in which Lucy visits her Mid-West relations after a prolonged absence. Laura Linney was starring in a one-woman show of the former. Strout was there for a rehearsal when Laura opined that maybe William, Lucy’s ex, had had an affair. A lightbulb went off for Strout and she realized that William had a story of his own. Thus was born Oh, William!

She carried forward details about William from the prior books and built outward, or dug deeper, from there. There were some real-world elements of William’s tale. William’s father was a German POW, held in Maine, and his mother, the wife of a farmer who was using POW labor, fell in love with him and left her husband. The POW camp is a real place.

"So my husband and I took a field trip. We went up there, we went to all the places that Lucy and William go on their own trip, and I took furious notes on everything I saw. And when we came back I settled down and wrote their story". - from the RandomHouse Book Club kit

Caveat Lector
You should know before diving in too far that, while I have read Strout’s Olive books, I have not read her prior Lucy Barton books. As Oh, William! is a third in that stack, this is not a trivial shortcoming. There are likely to be connections between this book and the prior two that I missed. But I have read up on those a bit, and acquired some gist. That said, I believe Oh, William! can be read, enjoyed and, hopefully, reviewed as a stand-alone. Just sayin’, cards on the table.

On the other hand, I felt very personally touched and engaged by the novel. I am of a common demographic with William, (we even share TWO names) and re-viewing the events of a lifetime is a natural hazard of this place in our existence. One thinks about the ages, the events, the people, the possibilities, the chances missed, and caught, the attempts that failed or succeeded, the misreads and the insights, the absence of understanding and the wise perceptions, maybe the bullets dodged, the awful relationships that never happened, the good ones that did, maybe the actual bullets that impacted elsewhere. In a way one might see this novel as a look back over William’s life from the point of his final days. A life examined. It could also be seen as the life of a relationship examined, the intersection of two trunks, Lucy and William, meeting, intertwining, then branching out in separate but linked directions.

In any such examination, whether of a life or relationship, it is natural, I believe, to wonder what might have been. Could we have performed better in the roles in which we were cast, or in which we had cast ourselves. To wonder why the director led us to this spot, to stage right instead of left, and always wondering at the playwright, and whether there was ever a script at all. This question of choices is one Strout takes on here. How much freedom of choice is there, actually, how much decision-making? William and Lucy talk about her decision to leave him.

"I would like to know—I really would like to—when does a person actually choose anything? You tell me.”
I thought about this.
He continued, “Once every so often—at the very most—I think someone actually chooses something. Otherwise we’re following something—we don’t even know what it is but we follow it, Lucy. So, no. I don’t think you chose to leave.”
After a moment I asked, “Are you saying you don’t believe in free will?”
William put both hands to his head for a moment. “Oh stop with the free will crap,” he said. He kept walking back and forth as he spoke, and he pushed his hand through his white hair. “…I’m talking about choosing things. You know, I knew a guy who worked in the Obama administration, and he was there to help make choices. And he told me that very very few times did they actually have to make a choice. [This was taken from a conversation Strout actually had with an Obama official, about how the decisions to be made were so obvious that there was little choosing required] And I always found that so interesting. Because it’s true. We just do—we just do, Lucy.”"

And how might it be that so much of our lives is so constrained? A lot of that is based on where we began. Marx would call it class, and that is a very powerful force indeed. Strout digs into the specific roots of this for her characters. Lucy had grown up poor and miserable, (I have no memory of my mother ever touching any of her children except in violence.) and never felt entirely comfortable, persistently invisible even, (I have always thought that if there was a big corkboard and on that board was a pin for every person who ever lived, there would be no pin for me.) in the more middle-class world in which she lived with William, a parasitologist researcher (a nod to her father of the same profession) and teacher, despite her successful authorial career, despite living in a nice neighborhood in Manhattan, despite raising successful children. She is not the only major character haunted by an impoverished childhood. It is made quite clear that this other character had been severely damaged by that experience and that it had driven many life decisions.

The external of the story is William’s discovery at age seventy-one that he has a half-sister he had never known about. William and Lucy had remained on friendly terms, despite their divorce and subsequent remarryings. William’s third wife has left him. Lucy is widowed. He asks her go to Maine with him to look into this never-suspected sibling. Although it seems a bit odd, Lucy agrees to go along. It gives them both opportunities to look back, not just on their own lives, but on the lives of William’s parents. Coming to this revelation so late in life raises an issue. Is it ever really possible to truly know anyone? Lucy had kept much of her early life hidden away. William’s mother, Catherine, a very large presence in their marriage, had done the same. William had kept plenty of secrets during their marriage, including multiple affairs. He covered his true feelings with a friendly façade, and Lucy loathed him for that. But Lucy had kept a part of herself turned away from him as well. Her family’s rejection of her marriage to William left a lasting scar. The externals of their trip reveal some buried truths, but this is a novel about internals, not physical action.

How does one cope with the challenges of dealing with other people, with those to whom we are closest? There is the challenge of knowing who they truly are in the first place. And then there is the challenge of letting our true selves be seen, to allow ourselves to be vulnerable, to trust others with our most delicate emotional parts. This is almost certainly universal. Who among us does not have at least one secret (and I would bet that most have more) that we keep hidden even from our closest friends, our lovers, our mates, parents, children, priests, shrinks, not to mention the police?

There was an amazing film released in 1973, Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage. (Recently remade for HBO) It examines ten years of a union doomed to failure. The original was a revelation for me. My gf at the time urged me not to see it, concerned about the impact on my view of whatever-it-was we had. Oh, William! reminded me of that, less as a forensic analysis of a marital corpse, but as a broader view of a lifelong connection, in their marriage, and beyond it, a friendship. It looks at what went into building their marriage, at what kept it from being more than it was, and at the impact of William’s mother on their lives. Even after they split up, Lucy often says He is the only home I ever had.

One of the many triumphs of Oh, William! is how Strout offers up many small bits, pointing out the things about their interactions with each other that drove them crazy, that show without telling.

"He stared at me, and then I realized he wasn’t really seeing me.
“Did you sleep?” I asked him, and he broke into a smile then, his mustache moving, and he said, “I did. How crazy is that? I slept like a baby.”
He did not ask about my sleep and I did not tell him."

The past is our inevitable root. We are not ents, that can simply follow our needs and drag ourselves away from where we sprouted. That past is inescapable, even if we can change our external circumstances, move up in the world, move away from the painful parts that formed us. But we live in the present, and the past often appears to the here-and-now in the form of ghosts, of one sort or another. When William and Lucy visit Fort Fairfield in Maine, it is truly a ghost town, barely even a town any more. Images they see in the local library conjure a long dead era. In a way their marriage, if not their friendship, is a spectral presence, long dead, although still hovering in the room.

I usually try to come up with something that did not sit well in a book, gripes of one sort or another, elements that might have been better. This time, really, I got nuthin’.

There is so much in this novel that is beautifully portrayed, insightful, wise, and moving. A penetrating portrait of two people and their half-century of connection, warts and all. Oh, William! is a masterwork by one of our greatest fiction writers, at the peak of her creative power. Oh, Elizabeth. You’ve done it again.

"There have been a few times—and I mean recently—when I feel the curtain of my childhood descend around me once again. A terrible enclosure, a quiet horror: This is the feeling and it was my entire childhood, and it came back to me with a whoosh the other day. To remember so quietly, yet vividly, to have it re-presented to me in this way, the sense of doom I grew up with, knowing I could never leave that house (except to go to school, which meant the world to me, even though I had no friends there, but I was out of the house)—to have this come back to me presented a domain of dull and terrifying dreariness to me: There was no escape.
When I was young there was no escape, is what I am saying."

Review posted – November 5, 2021

Publication date – October 19, 2021


I received an ARE of Oh, William! from Random House in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating.

Please visit my site to see the complete, properly formatted review, with links - https://cootsreviews.com/2021/11/05/oh-yes-oh-william-by-elizabeth-strout/

OH William! Follows Strout’s previous novels
My Name is Lucy Barton and Anything is possible.
Lucy is in her sixties now and is thinking back about her ex-husband William. Although she focuses on William, she can’t help but reflect on who she is as a wife, daughter and mother.
One story about how she wasn’t allowed to cry when she was a child made me stop and close the book, as that was how I grew up as well.
This is a heartfelt, beautifully written story. Be warned, it will make you stop and think, smile, and maybe shed a tear or two. Thank you Netgalley & Random House for the gifted copy. All opinions are my own.

Oh William!, Elizabeth Strout's third book featuring Lucy Barton, is rich in characterization, perhaps skimpy in plot, but packed full of insight into human nature.

William was Lucy's first husband, the father of her two daughters. They have been divorced for many years and each has remarried, but they've stayed in touch and now circumstance has brought them together on an outing to explore William's roots.

Lucy Barton has one of the most distinctive voices in literature, although I found it pronouncedly more dithery and tentative this time around. Still, her wisdom shone through.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for an advance readers copy.

Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout is a novel that reads more like a memoir. Lucy Barton, from Strout's previous book, My Name is Lucy Barton, tells the story of her relationship with her first husband William. Even though they divorced, they still remained friends, and in this book, Lucy tells all about love, family, and life. This is the first book I've read by Elizabeth Strout, but it will definitely not be the last. Her writing draws you in and feels comfortable and familiar, and I absolutely loved it. Thanks to NetGalley for the free digital copy. All opinions are my own.

I am late to the Elizabeth Strout fan club and I regret this. Oh William is a powerful yet simple story about marriage, our perceptions, the baggage we carry with us throughout life. It’s about the things we believe that are at odds with the truth. Simply put this is a remarkable book that exposes our daily thought-thoughts that we sometimes don’t want to admit are true. While the syntax can be odd-putting at times -a minor quibble-I highly recommended this title.

It's been quite a long time since I've read any of Strout's novels - not that her work is absent from gigantic TBR, but for whatever reason, it's been ages since I have picked up anything of hers. Invited by the publisher to read this one - her latest - I was excited to be re-introduced to her writing. But when I learned that this actually the third book to feature these characters, I was a little bit hesitant - I really hate to read a series out of order. But since this year has been a hectic one, and I am woefully behind on reading as well - I didn't have time to add the first two books to my monthly reading schedule... But, even without prior knowledge of Lucy, I did enjoy this novel quite a bit! I think those familiar with the Amgash books will perhaps appreciate this one a bit more. Strout's writing evokes emotion as Lucy reflects and focuses on her relationship with the titular character - William, her first husband. The book explores their past, but through Lucy's experiences now in her sixties and recently widowed from her second husband.

I really enjoyed the way that the story unfolds - as well as the relationships between the characters. I am sure anyone with experience of divorce and second marriages will find something to relate to here. I definitely think that this would be a great choice for a book club or discussion group - though I am sure that it is probably best discussed if a group starts with the first book, MY NAME IS Lucy Barton. I think that Strout covers enough of the key facts from earlier novels for a reader who starts here to get a sense of them - and she certainly makes some tantalizing comments about details that must be covered in those books to make anyone eager to go back to be filled in - I know I am looking forward to doing just that!

Talented Elizabeth Strout returns following Anything Is Possible (2017) and My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016) with her eighth book, and third in the Amgash series, OH William! —where Lucy re-connects with her ex-husband William and the past and present convene. Oh, how I loved this book! 💚

"Meditative. Reflective. Soulful."

Lucy grew up in poverty in Amgash, IL, and those days in her past still haunt her even though she is now a successful author and resides in New York.

Her second husband, David (a cellist) has recently died, and she is still grieving. Her first husband, William (age 71), and Lucy (age 64) are still friends and they share two grown daughters.

William is now married to his 3rd wife (much younger) and they have a young daughter together. However, William feels comfortable talking to Lucy, and William is often distant and one of the reasons Lucy left him, plus his infidelity.

Lucy has always felt safe with William and now he shares some of his personal feelings with her and his night tremors. Lucy thinks he has not dealt with his mother's death.

When William's wife gives him an Ancestry gift card for his birthday, he digs into Catherine's past (his mother) and learns she came from a very poor background and had a child with her first husband that she had never mentioned.

William cannot stop thinking about this and asks Lucy to go on a road trip to Maine to try and find his sister and more about his mother's past.

Lucy is not wild about this trip but agrees. Soon into the trip, she remembers all too well why she left William in the first place. Things are tense, but again, this is Lucy, so she always makes you smile and laugh out loud. Loved the part about the pants being too short.

Lucy always felt inferior around Catherine, William's mom, since she always seemed so worldly and even made a few remarks in the past about Lucy's impoverished background.

As they embark on their journey, the two struggle with their past, loneliness, grief, and soon discover that they both still suffer from traumas from their past; however, they may have shaped them for the person they have become.

Oh William! explores William and Lucy's relationship both past and present with a trip down memory lane. Both are complex characters yet somehow they feel safe together but better apart. But they have learned to depend on one another.

The novel can be read as a standalone; however, would highly recommend reading the previous books in order to enhance your reading experience.

I adore this series and it was fun catching up with Lucy and William. I enjoy Strout's writing immensely and when reading you feel like you are speaking with a best friend telling a story. She is one of my favorite authors and find her writing captivating and thought-provoking.

A special thank you to Random House and NetGalley for an early reading copy. I also purchased the audiobook narrated by Kimberly Farr.

Blog Review:
@JudithDCollins
#JDCMustReadBooks
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Pub Date: Oct 19, 2021
Top Books of 2021

Lucy Barton is the best person, (I guess I should really describe her as a character) to narrate all the learnings of life as we reach that certain age. Whatever that age is, William her ex husband is going through troubles and this starts the two of them on a journey. Lucy is still mourning the death of her more recent husband so she has her own thoughts to sort out.

Well written, Elizabeth Strout is divine at creating characters that are just so real they feel like friends you have known for a long time. William fascinated me because he had a pattern of cheating and I was dying to figure out why. I think that Oh! William answers some of those questions and more. If I did not know this book was fiction, I would have thought it was non-fiction. Strout is a wonderful storyteller!

I liked this more than the last one in this series. I enjoyed being back in just Lucy's world, I didn't really care about all the other people mentioned in "Anything is Possible". But this still just felt like a memoir about someone who had a fairly terrible marriage and still spent time with the man after it was over. I like it, but couldn't relate to it. There were moments that I enjoyed and moments that bored me.

Overall, I am pretty middle of the road on this one, it was just okay for me.