Interesting premise with a slightly interesting execution. Still, I could not fully engage. I wish I coule pinpoint why. It has to be the prose. It was not the idea.

Oh, William! Oh Lucy!

I am a fangirl of Strout's writing. She has a special way with words to share mundane details about a person and their characteristics. She crafts worlds with characters that you meet over and over and the side characters have a way of popping in and out of the world that Strout has created. The latest brings us back to Lucy Barton - as she is grieving the loss of her second husband David, she shares about her past with her first husband William. Almost told in tiny vignettes, Lucy and William replay memories from childhood, present day, and their marriage.

I found myself thinking about this as I closed the cover, in the middle of the night, and as I went about the days. While nothing crazy happens plot-wise, somehow I'm invested in this world, and these people. A small snippet of their lives are shared with us at this specific point. I loved how annoyed Lucy got reminding herself why William was not for her, the jokes about how his khakis were too short just had me rolling. The nuances of our lives actually tell the story, and I long to know more about Strout's characters and her world.

This is a lovely addition to the Lucy Barton story. Looking into her past and current relationships with her ex-husband William and grown children, and how that intertwines with the upbringing we learned about in previous writing. The story is written in Stout's style of small paragraphs and character musings. All the memories and actions create a story that exposes more of who Lucy is and why. Strout/Baton fans will not be disappointed.

'So there was that.'

'And we lived our lives on top of this.'

'Keep the stupid coffee, I wanted to cry out sometimes. I'll make my own coffee.'

'A friend had said to me once, "whenever I don't know what to do, I watch what I am doing." '

Thank you to Random House Publishing group - Random House for an early copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

A new book by Elizabeth Strout is always a treasure and one to be savored. Lucy Barton is back again in Oh William! She’s now in her 60’s, a successful writer, living in Manhattan and trying to make sense of life after the death of her beloved second husband, David. She’s surrounded by family - daughters Chrissy and Becka and, of course, her first husband William.
William is married to his third wife (Estelle) as the book opens. He’s 70, she’s 22 years younger and they have a 10 year old daughter together. He is as needy as ever but he and Lucy have managed to sustain an interesting relationship after their divorce.
Ms. Strout’s writing is beautiful and the book captures her observations about life, childhood, and William. I love how Ms. Strout lets us experience real life through the eyes of such interesting female characters. (Lucy, in this instance, but Olive in several of her other books). It’s a wonderful book and while some questions are answered about Lucy….she also left me hanging. I want to know more about Lucy, William, Chrissy and Becka!
Thanks to Netgalley and Random House for the opportunity to read Oh William! In exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book by Elizabeth Strout. Her writing style is so captivating. It’s simple, and very conversational but at the same time has so many layers. It really made me feel that I had a deep understanding of the characters in the book, especially Lucy and William. I love a book that also makes me reflect on my own life.

Synopsis:

Lucy Barton has just recently lost her second husband, David. But she starts off by telling us the book is not about David but about her first husband, William.
She had two daughters with WIlliam and they were married for quite some time but then she decided to leave him for some unforgivable things he’d done to their marriage. I don’t want to say too much here because I liked having that revealed to me during the book.

William goes on to marry two other women. The book takes place during his last marriage, to Estelle, who is quite a bit younger. Despite being married to Estelle he still turns to Lucy for comfort. Lucy was okay with this and she even got along with Estelle, even socializing with them. I’m not sure I would be able to do that were I in that situation! Even though Lucy focuses her story on William we learn about her difficult childhood and the scars it left on her. We learn about William’s mother and her upbringing and role that she had in Lucy and William’s marriage.

Lucy often claims that she is invisible to the world despite being a successful writer.

I think it was just really refreshing to hear from a character in the late autumn of her life. A time when one can reflect and have perspective about how their life turned out!

What a quiet, lovely little gem. This mostly takes place in the interior of Lucy Barton's mind, where she's reminiscing about her life with William, her ex-husband, after the death of her husband David. She is also still in contact with William and he is the father of her two adult daughters, so they still function as a sort of family. I loved how Lucy's feelings and thoughts about William and about her past are tinged with sadness, complicated with love, and a general comical annoyance (hence, "Oh William!"). Reading this book felt like reading a meditation on the nuances of broken families, and how people remain with us either figuratively or literally in this case, long beyond we've said our official goodbyes to them and moved on. Beautiful writing. Thank you!

Oh Elizabeth Strout! Oh Lucy Barton! OH WILLIAM, the newest addition in the stories of author Strout’s character, Lucy Barton, is a wonderfully complex combination of family discovery, rumination and storytelling. Lucy tells the tales here and her POV moves over her lifetime in moving and refreshing ways. This book is most enjoyed after reading the earlier books about Lucy, to be honest. She is such a complex character. But the book is a complete tale unto itself; it can be read as a stand alone. I read it all in one day. I could not put it down. I would probably just start over at the beginning, again, if I didn’t have other books to be read. It really is so good. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

This is book three in the life of Lucy Barton. Although I haven't read any of this series, I’ve read other Strout books and I fell in love with her sharp, honest, and conversational way of writing. 𝗢𝗵 𝗪𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗺! certainly follows that formula to a tee.

Lucy is now in her sixties and grieving the loss of her second husband David. But Lucy is still friendly with her first husband, William, and suddenly she finds her life rotating around him once again.

William has remarried, wife number three for him, but he is having night terrors that center around his mother. And Lucy was really the only wife who knew his mother well. So Lucy and William investigate this a little deeper, together.

What I loved about this book was that Lucy is telling you the story. And she will digress and say, “that’s all I want to say about that now, or here,” but, of course, she will tell you more later, or right then and there. It’s like sitting across the table with an old friend who is catching you up on their life. And she lets you in on her most intimate thoughts.

Oh William! is also a very pensive tale. Lucy feels invisible; actually she says she literally is invisible in this world (which isn’t true). But by the story's end, I think she realizes that we all have a sense of aloneness, for can we truly be known by another?

Thank you to @randomhouse for this gifted digital arc.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the gifted ARC of the digital ebook.

Oh William is highly recommended for fans of Olive Kitteridge novel. This is a literary fiction novel.

This novel was brilliantly written.

I received an email from the publisher of Oh William! with a blurb that said "because you loved Taylor Jenkins Reid..." - I didn't have to read any more after that. I absolutely loved TJR! I fell in love with Evelyn Hugo, Daisy Jones and enjoyed the ride of Malibu Rising. Couple that with reading how the author of Oh William, Elizabeth Strout, won a Pulitzer Prize for her writing, and I really wanted to give this one a try.

Oh William is book 3 of a series about Lucy Barton's life. It does read well as a stand alone. Book 1 was made into a Broadway show that starred Laura Linney. I had to see what this was all about!

As a fan of women's fiction, there is a certain pace that I have become accustomed to. Stories can move quickly, and sometimes there are twists and turns you never saw coming. Characters come alive and I look for books that make me want to continue turning the pages. This story's pace was very different from that.

The action in this story is very passive. I did not feel like I was there in the thick of it, but rather I was sitting in a rocking chair on a porch, listening to my grandmother tell stories of her life. Some places Lucy would say "I won't talk about that" and then later she would reminding us that she didn't want to talk about it but in order to make sense of the current story, we had to have a bit of extra information. Having come off of a story that was fast moving and a little bit of a spicy romance, this was an interesting change of pace.

Strout can weave together a nice story, but you have to be in the right frame of mind for it. I would not call this a quick read or an exciting read, but it was nice to step outside of my story comfort zone and read something new.

What a delight to read a book by Elizabeth Strout again! I find myself relishing each word, phrase and sentence — she has such a gift for writing and storytelling. I have not read My Name is Lucy Barton (#1) or Anything is Possible (#2) so I came to the third installment in the series Oh William! cold, without any prior knowledge. But you best believe I am very eager to read the previous two now! I found that Oh William! succeeds as a stand-alone novel that I enjoyed immensely.

The writing is beautiful and the reader comes to feel they know these characters well — their voices are so genuine as well as relatable. We become completely immersed into their world as only Ms. Strout can do. In fact, so immersed that it becomes sad to leave them. Don’t misunderstand — these are not simple characters. They are complex and flawed individuals that stay bound to each other and Lucy wonders why and shares her intimate thought process on the matter. She is an introspective individual that seems sincere, well-intentioned and likable. It was refreshing to see two divorced people stay so close to each other, like best friends.

Our protagonist becomes scared and frightened at times throughout her life and in the book. I found myself just wanting to hug her and tell her it will be ok. She feels safe with William and considers him her “home” at times. William has his foibles yet he is real and faces a couple of crises and turns to Lucy for support.

I highly recommend any book by Elizabeth Strout and cannot wait for her next one. She is simply a national treasure and a delight to read. Thank you to random House and NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Oh William! Is the first novel I have read written by Elizabeth Strout. Definitely a master writer she explores the relationship that exist between some who have divorced. It is remarkable when some are able to stay friends getting in contact over the years. Told by Lucy Barton this story shows the complexities and mysteries of these relationship along with much about Lucy herself.

By the end you see the need for connection, the gift of forgiveness over some major human flaws and still not be able to explain why such relationships thrive. However, I have no doubt that they do.

I had not read the first two books in this trilogy but did not feel as if there were gaps that I didn’t understand. All background needed was given as the story progressed. At least I think so since I didn’t feel lost or confused as it went along.

The publisher through Net Galley provided a digital ARC. I have voluntarily decided to read and review, giving my personal opinions and thoughts.

I didn’t realize that Oh, William! is the third book in a series by Elizabeth Strout. The author’s storytelling is so good that I didn’t feel like I missed out on anything, however, I am now intrigued enough by the main character, Lucy Barton, to go back to the first book and start the series.

Oh, William! is not terribly long, but in its 256 pages I felt like I got to know Lucy Barton and her ex-husband William very well. Lucy is a published author and the narrator of the story. William is twice divorced and again separated. It took me a while to warm up to Lucy. Ms. Strout’s concise sentence structure made me think of the stoic, no-nonsense North Easterners. Her stories’ characters have a strong sense of stoicism about them. Lucy is judgmental and vulnerable at the same time. Lucy’s judgement comes from what she is accustom to from childhood and perhaps it makes her feel better about herself. She is so hard on herself—accepting blame from her children as well as self-blaming for all that is wrong with the people in her life (none of whom take ownership for their own issues). How can a well-received and recognized author feel invisible? She was taught to not value herself.

On the other hand, William thinks very highly of himself. It is evident that throughout each of his marriages, and especially his marriage to Lucy, he considered himself to be the most important person in the household (perhaps overcompensating for lack of recognition in his career?). He is an absolute bore. A self-absorbed cheater who makes Lucy feel less—even in present day. I can’t imagine why she shows him any kindness or attention except that she is lonely after the loss of her second husband. Being with William clearly makes her realize that she only found love with her second husband and consequently feels the loss even more.

Oh, William! is character driven, not plot driven. It highlights interesting human situations and complex relationships. I loved and despised the characters. They made me feel and think and care. There is nothing more I could ask from this story.

I have mixed feelings about this book. It seemed to drag and the plot was nonexistent. But Elizabeth Strout's writing is poignant and perceptive. I think I was at a disadvantage not being familiar with the other books in this series. I put it down and picked it up many times. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC.

Oh William! is my introduction to this narrator who is previously published by Elizabeth Strout.

I’m going back in time to get better acquainted with Lucy Barton, as I found her totally lovable, humanly flawed and a lot like my beloved late great-aunt and myself. She’s fun and delightful with her thinking and discussions.

Wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was very much entertained by her retelling and recollecting her life and her experiences with her first husband, other marriages, children and a love that is solid and enduring.

William and Lucy both are still learning life, still covering them uncharted territory as they age and I find that reassuring and enlightening personally.

I’m looking forward to learning more about this author and her life up to this point!

The complex relationship between Lucy, a writer and her ex husband, WIlliam. Very thought provoking and eye opening. It was a slow read for me, but only because I wanted to take it all in and slowly digest the story.

Strout is a successful American author whose novel "Olive Kitteridge" won the Nobel prize for literature in 2009. This new release is the third in a series, the first two of which are "My Name Is Lucy Barton" and "Anything Is Possible". While this one can be read as a stand-alone, I recommend having read at least the first in the series, which introduces us to Lucy's story. In this short novel Lucy ponders William, her first husband. They have remained friends and have two daughters together, so as he researches his family tree she supports him and accompanies him on a trip to Maine. This is a beautifully written story, but it is not for someone who is looking for a lot of action as it moves slowly.

𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐆𝐨𝐝, 𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐚 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝.

I favor the first in the Amgash series but what I loved about this third one, is how ridiculous William can be. Is it the man of a certain age thing? I don’t know. It seems he is given far more license to be hurtful and selfish than any woman ever is. Why is that? Is it a generational thing? Lucy has remained connected to her first husband William, she finds so many things about him touching, never hesitates to say ‘tell me’ because really, she is the one he turns to. Why Lucy married William is evident, she wanted to not be herself anymore. Married for about twenty years, with two daughters, who doesn’t know once you have children there is a link that lasts forever, the two remained steadfast even after divorce. Lucy is a novelist and writes her life with William, for us, like a book.

William is strong, time hasn’t taken much from him, if anything he looks far better with age. No justice has been meted out for his philandering ways and in fact he is on his third wife, who is young enough to be his child. Surprisingly, Lucy’s love for him despite their divorce, his lovers in between and his children with other women, has never wavered. If his mother, a formidable woman, loved him ferociously, he seems to inspire a mothering instinct in his former wife as well. Sharing his terrors, looking to her for comfort in the problems of his life, she is the ever present audience, his sounding board. It is perfectly fitting she is the one who helps him seek out answers for the puzzling past his mother left behind. Without disclosing what happens, I feel the emotional landscape of the people involved felt genuine for once. Truth is confusing, and the struggle William feels when confronting his mother Catherine’s former life exposes how terrified human beings are of the unfamiliar. Lucy just lost her second husband, whom she loved deeply, and yet everything about William seems to trump others personal journeys. His third wife has left him, so he is suffering! It’s infuriating and yet, feels painfully real. How do some people manage it? To have the sole focus of every person in their life on them, as if no one else has a story? But Lucy does, have a story, one where we come to understand how she allowed William to eclipse her. Childhood, our origins, often set us off on a track that we have a hell of a time getting off. Maybe being a writer is the form Lucy picked to ‘have authority’, it seems William is the one who always has it in reality. Is it because having come from poverty she never felt authority was hers to take? The likeable, fiercely loved Catherine, her mother-in-law, never failed to mention that Lucy ‘came from nothing’. What an interesting aside, no?

When Lucy travels with William to the town his mother lived in with her first husband, before ditching the man, this ‘wonderful, self-contained woman’ has left behind a surprise that bewilders them both. What moved me was Lucy’s past. Maybe it explains why she feels so ‘invisible’, why William was so large in her heart. The poison of making a child feel worthless early on, more often than not, shadows them forever. Together, old hurts arise, and Lucy deals with it, even when William can’t. They remain the only ones who know each other best, but there is still an elusiveness to William but if anyone can understand him it is only her. Despite the pain of his affair, their divorce, marriages and children in between the years, the two still have an easy closeness and therefore who better than Lucy to uncover Catherine’s secrets with?

It is a painful journey, in my opinion much more for Lucy. Looking back through time at the strangeness of her life, of every life, wondering about the meaning of love, between children, parents and spouses- there are many wounds and not everything makes sense. We don’t always understand why people act the way they do, or hold back affection. In writing about her parents, she takes into account the horrors fate visited upon them, how it changed them, her father in particular after the war and his PTSD. How a child loves their parent despite unimaginable, loathsome abuses. Why some people remain so vital in our lives and what it tells us about ourselves. William and Lucy are ‘contained in the fabric of each other’, no doubt. They are so important to one another but how much of what we feel is fact and how much is myth? It’s a solid read and Strout is a wonderful writer who tackles the reality of fractured relationships. Yes, read it!

Published: October 19, 2021 Available Now

Random House

Oh, William is such a complex mix of human emotions, memories, and revelations. How well do we know the people we live with for years? Parents, spouses, children? Not always as well as we think, and the same is often true about how well we "know" ourselves. A lovely, character-driven story of a family, Oh, William makes the reader look into themselves and their own relationships. Now, I have to go back and read Lucy Barton and all of Elizabeth Strout's books that I've missed.

A beautiful cover and a beautifully written book, as many of you have mentioned. I'm late to reading Elizbeth Strout, but it has been such a satisfying experience. How ordinary, how extraordinary!

NetGalley/Random House
Family. Oct. 19, 2021. Print length: 256 pages.

Real Rating: 3.5* of five, rounded down because Lucy <I>dithered and <U>divagated and <B>wittered</b></u></i> *deep breath*

<B>I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review</b>: I, alone among US adults 49-64, did not like <I>Olive Kitteridge</i>. I was lukewarm about <I>My Name is Lucy Barton</i>, but I didn't find it intolerably tedious. I truly can't think what made me ask Random House for a DRC of this book, but ask I did and they, unaccountably, said yes.

I'm really rather glad they did.

Lucy Barton is greatly more to my taste than Olive ever was. Amgash, her terrible isolated childhood, her absolutely clueless bumblings through parenthood, childhood's memories, learning to be Other with her mother, her *her*ness, rubbed me the right way as opposed to Olive's sandpaper-on-a-sore-tooth effect on me.

This story comes to me when I am Lucy's age, and I am also taking stock of my many pasts. William, father of Lucy's two daughters, wasn't the right husband for her nor was she the right wife for him. (Two more failed or failing marriages later, no one seems to be.) But they're friends. And as anyone who's ever been married or long-term-coupled will tell you, that's the thing that lasts. Their continued use of Button, her nickname from William, and Pillie, his nickname from her, is signaling this is a friendship for life. What her divorce stemmed from was, I suspect she is now coming to realize, a misunderstanding of what their true connection was.

But why, after decades apart, are we back in the position of hearing about William? Because the crisis in his life, learning an unwelcome truth about his own mother (whose relationship to Lucy was always cordial, if fraught on Lucy's side), and realizing that at seventy-one he is not going to Make It Right without trying (for once!), draws him right back to his heart-stealing first wife. She, whose second marriage was so very happy until he died on her, won't ever say No to Pillie. (Skip over the divorce bit.)

What transpires in this book was that rare and precious thing: Self discovery. Pillie and Button don't have all the time in the world, and they don't have a lot to lose as a result. Their relationship-long ability to connect in honesty (which is also why she left their marriage) is, at this late date, the most precious and unbelievably rare gift each has to give; the gift that each is now grateful to receive.

Lucy's old. She's had time to marinate in her failures. And she *still* obsesses about surfaces and appearances! Such a little thing, her snarky asides about what others are wearing and who can't make a decent speech; but so instantly relatable. Her life-long isolation and Otherness, relics of the childhood she survived, are never going to be gone, finished, dealt with. And that knowledge is how she can relate to William, how she can find her way to being his friend...he's got the issues she's got, just from other causes. Where Lucy was made to feel invisible, William was made to feel he could only be BIG. It comes to the same thing in the end: Are you going to leave a hole in the world when you leave it?
<blockquote>Grief is such a—oh, it is such a solitary thing; this is the terror of it, I think. It is like sliding down the outside of a really long glass building while nobody sees you.
–and–
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.

I feel invisible, is what I mean. But I mean it in the deepest way. It is very hard to explain. And I cannot explain it except to say—oh, I don’t know what to say! 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.</blockquote>
These two people, these old friends, are groping towards the sense of life as it was lived being, when all is said and done, okay. Not great, not awful, okay. And the grief of that, the waste of "okay" to the world, is what they're learning to shrug off.

Eight decades on Earth and growing up never stops. If you're lucky. Pillie and Button are lucky. So are you and I, if we go with them.

Does my rating now seem mingy to you? I suspect it might. I'm not being unkind when I say there is a chemistry between writer and reader that I do not feel with Author Strout. Her phrase-making is often crazy-making for me. Her dithering women make me so so so so glad I'm gay. There are, of course, men who dither but thankfully I scare them off. I spent this whole book wanting to shout at Lucy, "GET TO THE POINT!!" when the point was that she doesn't. That made the read much more of a chore than a pleasure. But the story Lucy lived with her friend William, the story they're still living, was so very touching and moving and deeply agreeable to me that I powered through my desire to enact domestic violence upon her as she <I>dithered and <U>divagated and <B>wittered</b></u></i> *deep breath* Okay. Enough about that.

So there's the missing star-and-a-half. On the cutting-room floor, shall we say. But I want to be clear about this: Of the three books by Author Strout that I've read, this is head-and-shoulders above the rest and is the only one I will say, "read this, you will like it," about. It can be read as a stand-alone. It is better read after <I>My Name is Lucy Barton</i>, though. If you've already read Lucy Barton, you should trot right over to the bookery you prefer to patronize to get this before the COVID shortages make it impossible. Or, like me, get it on Kindle/e-reader.

But do get it.