Oh William! is the perfect book to curl up with on a long weekend. It is a tender story of the friendship that remains after the marriage has ended, all the legal paperwork has been filed, and the children have grown to be adults. Elizabeth Strout's novel falls into the genre focusing on love, affection, and moral support provided as once romantic couples grow older. The story unfolds in blending episodes that provide the back story of Lucy and William and leads to uncovering family secrets. Great book for book discussion groups.

Oh William! explores the intricacies of love, marriage, and family through Elizabeth Strout’s unique writing style.
Recommend for those familiar with the series.

* I received an advanced readers copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review

This was my first novel by Elizabeth Strout and once I got used to the narrative style used in this book, I was absolutely hooked on finding out more about the protagonist Lucy and what exactly the two events that were going to happen to her ex-husband William. Strout's ability to reveal a character's past as well as the feelings and truths about themselves they hold close to their chest, while still telling a story in the present, was really amazing. I found this book very intriguing and definitely recommend if you like lit fic!

I loved being back in Lucy Barton's world as she reflects on her relationship with her first husband, William. Elizabeth Strout writes characters so real and human and relatable. If you have enjoyed her previous books, I have no doubt you'll enjoy this one too.

This book was good, not great. Despite its short length and general ease of reading, it took me about 3 weeks to finish. I think Elizabeth Strout's writing just isn't for me.

Some literary fiction I just sink into and think, "Wow, this is such a human moment where I get to connect so strongly with his character." To me, that's what good literary fiction is — full of writing that makes us as readers feel less alone in our feelings. Oh William! had some of those moments, but the story's slow pace and general lack of development fell short.

Maybe if I had read My Name is Lucy Barton first, I would feel differently.

Did not realize this was the third book in a series! Looking forward to reading the first two. I've heard good things and am sure I will enjoy.

I loved this more than the Olive books and even the first Lucy Barton. This makes me feel like I'm reading a comprehensible Joyce... in Maine. I absolutely loved it. The best part is that there are lots of tiny moments of clarity throughout, but it feels like the entire book builds to a final epiphany. Oh, Elizabeth Strout, I will follow you into the darkness and the light. The joy you write into Lucy (despite her PTSD, her anxiety, her flaws) is awe-inspiring. I really loved this and can't recommend it enough.

Interesting Study of People
This is a very interesting book. It is not necessarily a story-telling novel, although it is and it does. In a series of reminiscences, the author tells her story as well as the story of her husband, their histories with and without each other, and their children. She paints the desolate scene of aloneness and invisibility surrounded by love and family. If you are feeling alone, invisible, or desolate, I don't know if this book will help or hurt you. I do know that I identified with some of it and it actually helped me change the way I look at some past relationships and hurts. I received this ARC book for free from Net Galley and this is my honest review.

Elizabeth Strout has a way of writing the makes the reader feel like they are just having a conversation with a good friend. Oh William! is narrated by Lucy Barton as she progresses through life after the death of her second husband. Lucy has always stayed friends with her first husband, William, the father of her two grown daughters. She is there for him after his third wife leaves him and he struggles with not being pertinent in his profession anymore.

Lucy and William go on an adventure together to Maine to research some of his family history. There are many revelations in store for both of them. I don't want to give too much away but there are a lot of hurt feelings on both sides.

How well do you know those around you and how well do you really know yourself? This small book packs a punch and makes you think.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for this honest review.

Oh William! By Elizabeth Strout is the third novel in the Amgash series. I did not know Oh William! was part of a series when I started reading it. I do not know if I would have understood the story more if I had read the other two books or not. Oh William! has Lucy Barton going on a trip with ex-husband William when he discovers he has a half-sister. The story is told from Lucy Barton’s point-of-view. She is telling her tale to the readers in a diary format. The story rambled along going back in forth in time (in no certain order). The story seemed plotless and pointless. The writing is descriptive which provides many details that are not needed. There is quite a bit of repetition as well as slow pacing. I was unable to connect with the characters in the story. I wanted to like Lucy and William, but I could not. The book may be short, but it felt like it went on forever. The story consists of only two long chapters. I wanted to like Oh William!, but I could not get into this story. I was not a fan of the writing, the characters, or the dialogue. I especially did not like the way the author presented the story. I found Oh William! to be boring and a hard book to finish. While Oh William! was not for me, I suggest you obtain a sample to check it out for yourself. Lucy’s takeaway at the end is that everyone is mystery and that we do not even know ourselves.

Elizabeth Strout is one of my favorite authors, and this recently published book is her newest in the interconnected Lucy Barton web she's woven.

In Oh William! Lucy examines her relationship with her first husband, William, and reflects on the fact that he has always been somewhat of a mystery to her. The two have remained connected through the years, and the closed-off William has always leaned on Lucy for support, despite the fact that he has been married two other times since Lucy, including to his current wife. Lucy remarried as well and is recently widowed.

Now William has uncovered a family secret that shakes him, and he asks Lucy to travel with him to investigate the truth.

In one respect Oh William! is an exploration of love, loss, friendship, forgiveness, and unshakable bonds. But I became impatient with Lucy's extensive ruminations and her speculation about what other people may have possibly felt or thought during certain moments in the past and her emphasis on examining tiny details of situations and memories.

The frequent, stammering "...is what I mean" qualifiers within Lucy's private observations or recollections contributed to a sense that her middle-aged character was generally hesitant, unsure of herself, and without a clear sense of her own mind. This felt like somewhat of a departure from the thoughtful analysis of the past I recalled from her faulted, more self-aware character in My Name Is Lucy Barton. Meanwhile, William is narcissistic, often childish, and seemingly shallow, and it felt odd to have so much of Lucy's focus and energy turned upon him.

The people Lucy has built her life around admiring and has spent her time clinging to as steady presences felt in many cases to be insufferable, selfish, and with little sense of duty or loyalty, and sometimes they aggressively asserted their own versions of reality regardless of the truth. We see Lucy begin to scrape the surface of discovering others' vulnerabilities, to realize her own self-told lies, and to recognize shortcomings in herself and in others, but while her own cherished versions of the past are in some cases threatened, her explorations of all of this didn't feel fully realized.

Check out my reviews of Elizabeth Strout's My Name Is Lucy Barton, Anything Is Possible, (both of which are interconnected to Oh William!) and Olive, Again. Strout also wrote Olive Kitteridge. In each of these books, Strout wonderfully mines small moments that make up a life.

I received a prepublication electronic version of this book courtesy of Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley.

“Oh William!”, by Elizabeth Strout, is a touching tale about love, loss, friendships, and secrets that could tear a family apart. It’s an emotional journey about the human condition full of unsolved feelings, self-critiquing inadequacies, and a walk down memory lane.

Told in a conversational style, it read like catching up with an old friend over a glass of wine. It is a short book that should be read slowly and savored.

This book is the third of a trilogy. This is the first book of the series that I have read and didn’t miss a beat. I have since, purchased the first two because I enjoyed this book so much.

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House, and Elizabeth Strout for the ARC in exchange for my honest review! ❤️️

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It was well written about a woman (Lucy), viewing William, her first husband. It's an odd relationship, one where she's no longer married to this man, yet still intimately involved with him. The book delves into the relationship, considering where she came from (such as how she was raised). It paints a portrait of her as a woman and where she is in life with both William and her daughters. I actually had mixed feelings on how so much of the focus was from a woman on a man--the book seemed in some places more about him than her, and though it fits the genre in a lot of ways, at times I wished she was more focused on herself without consideration to the men in her life.

Oh William! is a novel that explores family, relationships, and emotions. It is a beautiful story with characters that are so relatable, ones that are meandering through the ever changing paths of life while experiencing a myriad of emotions so pure and so raw. The writing style is more like a memoir and the words and emotions are just so genuine and real. I did not read the previous two in this series and though I’m not sure if I needed to, the main character does say “I wrote this before” quite a few times in this novel, so I know there are direct links. It was a slow read for me but it was also intriguing, I was lured by all of it.

Lucy Barton, from Elizabeth Strout’s book, “My Name is Lucy Barton,” reflects on her relationship with her first husband, William Gerhardt, who she met in college and has kept a casual friendship with over the years. They have two adult daughters from their marriage which lasted until Lucy left after about twenty years. They all live in New York City, and occasionally meet for holidays with William and his third wife, Estelle, and their ten-year-old daughter, Bridget, at William’s larger apartment. Polite and civil gatherings rather than cozy.

Lucy ‘finds herself’ in this book, which is to say she finally realizes it’s not where you come from that’s so important, it’s what you’ve done with your life and where you end up. Lucy always felt invisible and inferior, especially to William and his mother, Catherine, who use to remark, “that Lucy comes from nothing.” Lucy felt they knew more, had more, and in particular, knew how to act in every situation, and they let her know it without saying it aloud. But Lucy finds out that what she believed about them was not necessarily true.

William, Catherine’s only child, is the least self-aware person Lucy knows. She’s aware his mother doted on him but never realized how spoiled he was and how much of a small boy he still seems to be. He can be selfish at times, narcissist, to the point where his daughter comments, “he can act like a ‘dickwad’.” He doesn’t understand why his wives leave him. Every time he has a problem of some sort, he calls Lucy for advice.

Lucy lost her second husband, David, just a year before this time period (present day), takes place, to cancer. Lucy is sixty-three and lives alone in the apartment she shared with her husband. She is a successful author of several books and has traveled for their book tours. She meets her daughters for lunch or coffee at least once a week. William is about to turn seventy-one and still goes to his office at New York University (NYU) daily although he no longer teaches classes. He prides himself on being a scientist, tall with the requisite white hair and mustache, and continues to have an occasional ‘fling’ as he has through-out all of his marriages.

William’s current problem is night terrors, mostly about his mother, who died several years ago, which have been disrupting his sleep. He asks Lucy to meet him for coffee to discuss the situation. Nothing comes of this, but Lucy is aware that William is very upset over this dilemma. Eventually William finds out through researching his family ancestry that his mother, Catherine, (nee Cole), had a child before him with her first husband, a successful potato farmer in Maine. Catherine ran off with a German POW that worked on her husband’s farm, William’s biological father, thereby leaving the child, a girl, with her first husband. William is shocked that Catherine would do this and wants Lucy to go to Maine with him to find his half-sister. They find out much more than what they sought, which enlightens Lucy’s concept of herself, but seems to barely raise an eyebrow for William. Even several weeks later, when William has ‘recovered’ from their trip to Maine, he shows Lucy his latest look: shorter hair and no mustache, less the mad scientist, and asks Lucy to go on a trip to the Islands with him; clueless once again.

Strout writes with her elegant and subtle prose that has a pleasant, meandering cadence which I can read ‘ad infinitum.’ It’s better than a walk in a park; it’s gentle rain outside your window as you sit in your most comfortable chair in front of simmering fire, reading any book Elizabeth will write.

Thank you Netgalley, Random House Publishing Group, and Elizabeth Strout

“Oh, William!” is a heartfelt, contemporary novel. The narrative is stitched together through stream of consciousness remembrances of the main character, Lucy’s, former spouse, William.
Apparently, this is a sequel to Strout’s novel, “My Name is Lucy Barton,” but I dove right in without feeling like I was missing out on important context (although, I probably was!).
The manner of storytelling reminded me a lot of Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason, one of my favorite novels of the year!
Lucy is a likable and relatable protagonist and I found the concept of writing about a deceased ex-spouse to be very unique and interesting.

Knowing this book revisited Lucy Barton, I felt I had to read it. While I never put Strout’s books on my must read list, I am always drawn to discovering how the characters from earlier works re-enter her latest novels. The story rambles, which is what puts my rating of Strout’s work down a notch, unfolding more like a stream of consciousness than a narrative. I was drawn in quickly, as the short bursts of story make it a quick, easily consumed, update to characters we have met in Strout’s earlier books. So I ask myself, do I appreciate Strout’s writing more than I say I do? I think that is true.
Lucy’s casual acceptance of why she and William divorced, yet why they sometimes continue to rely on each other, is a well told unveiling of how some couples continue to relate to each other in lives they thought would be apart. The title is a perfect lead in to how one might roll their eyes at what the ex believes is needed while that one sees the, to them, obvious need. The characters are well formed, and while I don’t have a full memory of My Name is Lucy Barton, I think this title can be read with or without having read the earlier title. However, if you haven’t read Strout’s earlier works, I would suggest working from the old to the new.

Well, at least I’m consistent with my ratings of the books in this series. I looked back and I gave both “My Name is Lucy Barton” and “Anything is Possible” 3 stars as well. Granted, you don’t have to have read those books to enjoy this one. It probably gives you more insight into the characters and their relationships but it’s been 4 years since I read the other 2 books so I don’t think I pulled much from my memory. However, it didn’t go by me when Ms. Strout gave a shout out to the Burgess brothers from another book of hers and I read that one about 8 years ago (that was a 4 star read).

This story is about Lucy and her ex-husband William whom she has remained friends with over the years. After taking one of those genetic tests, William finds out that he has a sister that he never knew existed. He is recently separated and Lucy is widowed so she decides to be his needed support and join him on his journey to find out more about his past. There is no romance on this journey, just a true friendship. Although not written in a diary format, it has that feel because Lucy is telling the story and while doing so, she is also reflecting on her past.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this novel so that I might share my honest opinion – I enjoyed it and recommend it to others.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House for gifting me a digital ARC of this wonderful companion book to My Name is Lucy Barton by Pulitzer Prize winning author, Elizabeth Strout - 5 stars!

Lucy Barton is now a widow after the death of her beloved, David. This book focuses on her relationship with her first husband, William, the father of her two children, and still her friend. Lucy and William still tend to rely on each other as they navigate their new lives and watch their children navigate theirs. It's also a look into the past with family secrets taking their toll on present relationships.

This is so beautifully written and such a realistic peek into the thoughts of Lucy - it will resonate with every reader at some point as we go through different phases in our lives with family and friends. I love, love, love the way these books were written - it's like Lucy is sitting across from the table talking to you about the story of her life and relationships. So many life lessons here too - especially the many things we do not know until it is too late.

Highly recommended!

4-1/2 stars for wonderful writing and a novel that left me wanting to go back and read everything this very perceptive author has written. Strout is so amazingly attuned to her characters’ inner lives and writes their thought and feelings in a way few others can match. This was a character-driven novel, with minimal action and a great deal of reminiscing and self-reflection on the part of the narrator, Lucy Barton. It was a short and fairly quick read, and utterly engrossing and enjoyable.