Oh William!, is a frustrating book, with Strout revisiting the characters from her first book, which if you haven't read leaves you somewhat out of the loop. At it's heart Oh William is an exploration of love and relationships with the notion of a rose tinted view of the past exposed in all it's folly. Lucy and William although divorced still lean on each other for the companionship that only long-serving relationships can provide. As they both age, the remembrance of shared history is a tie that binds them as their lives begin to unravel and alarming discoveries are made.

This is my first book by Elizabeth Strout and it was a lovely read. Not my usual kind of read but it was enjoyable. This is about love and loss and was well written. Would recommend.

‘But when I think Oh William!, don’t I mean Oh Lucy! Too?’
I have already been introduced to Lucy Barton and was curious about her return, mainly because I enjoy Strout’s writing. In truth Lucy Barton hasn't been my favourite of Strout's characters - Olive Kitteridge is.
Oh William is the story of Lucy’s ex husband, William, or rather it might be regarded as her story told through her observation of him. Lucy is living on her own; her children are now adults and she is a widow after remarrying following her divorce from William. William’s wife has left him..Both William and Lucy are interrogating their own history in an effort to understand themselves, their actions and motivations.
Strout is an extraordinarily perceptive writer, she evokes the nuances, the tiny physicaliities and unique personalities of her subjects. William’s eyes are ‘brown and they have stayed large ..” She describes the minutia of their interactions and her characters are some of the best observed you will ever encounter. I am honestly not sure if I like Lucy Barton and therein lies my conundrum. Does my dislike of her make this a good book as she gets under my skin? She is a deeply uncomfortable woman who has endured a desperate childhood with both mental and physical hardship; this has undoubtedly shaped her. Her anxiety and social awkwardness are tangible. At one point William says, ‘You steal people’s hearts, Lucy.’ but she doesn’t steal mine. I am left awkward in her company. Lucy is a writer and she writes in a kind of parallel with Strout - sometimes I wonder who is actually writing the character! Lucy states ‘Because I am a novelist, I have to write this almost like a novel, but it is true.’ Barton (or Strout) frequently writes ‘and then there was this..’ and at these points I want to shout at her as though she were a friend who is telling me a story and really I don’t want to hear it anymore!
This really is extraordinary writing which breathes life into Lucy and William. It is also very much the style of Lucy Barton but amplified so if you enjoyed Lucy’s first outing, you will enjoy the second.
With grateful thanks to Netgalley and Penguin General UK for a digital copy of this book.

I hadn’t read Elizabeth Strout’s previous books about Lucy Barton but enjoyed this nonetheless. Lucy is now 60, long divorced from William and mourning the death of her second husband. William had never quite been out of her life and she reminisces about their time together with some fondness and some irritation. This book is about love, loss, family and other muses in life.

My thanks to #Netgalley and #Penguin publishing for the opportunity to review this book.
I reviewed this book not realising that it was part of a series. Having said this I read it as a stand alone book wishing that I had read the previous books.
It was a fascinating book examining relationships and long hidden secrets. Very easy reading.
If possible I would recommend reading the previous books but I wouldn’t let that deter you from picking up this book.

Elizabeth Strout excels at observing and understanding human behaviour. In this sequel to ‘My Name is Lucy Barton’ we connect with our narrator decades later as she navigates life with adult children, and reconnects with William, her now ex-husband. Through their encounters she explores her feelings and motivations and once again considers that it is impossible to escape the past.

EXCERPT: As we drove, William suddenly made a noise that was almost like a laugh. I turned my face toward him. 'What?' I said.

He kept looking straight ahead at the road. 'Do you know one time when you and I had a dinner party - well, it wouldn't have been called a dinner party, you never really knew how to pull off a real dinner party - but we had some friends over, and long after they had gone home, way after I had gone to bed, but then I came downstairs and found you in the dining room -' William turned his head to glance at me. 'And I saw -' Again he gave an abrupt sound of almost laughter, and he looked straight ahead again. 'And I saw you bending down and kissing the tulips that were there on the table. You were kissing them, Lucy. Each tulip. God, it was weird.'

I looked out the window of my side of the car, and my face became very warm.

'You're a strange one, Lucy,' he said after a moment. And that was that.

ABOUT 'OH WILLIAM!': 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 longtime, 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.

MY THOUGHTS: After having read the first two Amgash books, My Name is Lucy Barton, and Anything is Possible, which focussed on Lucy's earlier life - i.e. leading up to 63, and on people she has known at various times in her life, respectively - I was excited to pick up Oh William!, which looks at her current relationship with her ex-husband, father of her two daughters, and sometimes friend, William.

Lucy is still grieving the loss of her second husband, David, who, I feel obliged to point out, was a much nicer man than William. William liked to belittle Lucy, mainly I think to cover his own feelings of inadequacy, the reasons for which come to light in Oh William!

Sometimes, in my head, I am very much like Lucy Barton. I try not to be, although I love Lucy to bits, but I am. And that is the thing about Strout's characters - we are able to recognise bits of ourselves in them. But the point that I am getting to is that unlike Lucy, I would have never agreed to go on a trip with my ex-husband, not even with the temptation of finding a half sister he never knew he had, and discovering more about the first marriage of his mother, another unknown. Okay, I might have been momentarily tempted, but I would never have gone. But then William and Lucy have a totally different relationship to mine which is completely non-existent and will remain that way.

We learn a lot about William which, I guess, is the whole point of this book. He is exposed, warts and all, and I was left liking him even less than I had originally.

Oh William! is, like it's two predecessors, a book that I completely lost myself in. I hope that it is not the last in the series. I want to know if Chrissy will succeed in becoming pregnant and carry to full term. I want to know Lucy in old age. I am not yet ready to say goodbye to this family.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

#OhWilliam #NetGalley

I: #elizabethstrout @penguinukbooks

T: @LizStrout @PenguinUKBooks

#fivestarread #contemporaryfiction #familydrama #sliceoflife

THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth Strout is the author of several novels, including: Abide with Me, a national bestseller and BookSense pick, and Amy and Isabelle, which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in England. In 2009 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her book Olive Kitteridge. Her short stories have been published in a number of magazines, including The New Yorker. She teaches at the Master of Fine Arts program at Queens University of Charlotte.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Penguin General UK - Fig Tree via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of Oh William! for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

For an explanation of my rating system please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com

This review is also published on Twitter, Amazon, Instagram and my webpage

I was excited to be given the opportunity to read this book as I had previously enjoyed 'My name is Lucy Barton'; however, the two titles are totally separate and can be read as standalone titles.

I have to confess that I did not enjoy this as much as I did the last title that I read. I found William rather irritating and self-centred and Elizabeth unable to stand up for herself in his presence despite having had the guts to leave and divorce him many years previously.

Elizabeth's backstory is heartbreaking, but I don't ever feel that she really moved on from it and spent her whole life apologising for a tough childhood that was clearly out of her control. A road trip with William to discover his newly-discovered lost family should have brought them closer together through shares history and brutal revelations, but it doesn't: in fact, I found William's cavalier manner quite difficult to accept.

The writing style is almost stream of consciousness as Elizabeth leaps from one memory to another with tenuous (if any) links. The book is a short read, but not one I found particularly satisfying compared to the first in the series.

Lucy Barton has become an intimate friend over the years; she is shy and reserved in person but thanks to her faux memoirs we get access to her innermost thoughts, memories and worries.
In her first instalment (“My name is Lucy Barton”) we learn about a time where Lucy is in hospital for about 9 weeks after an appendectomy gone wrong. Her daughters are still very young, and her husband - William - only takes them to the hospital for visits a couple of times. He also doesn’t visit by himself, so as a character (though the book deals mostly with Lucy’s childhood memories and the relationship with her mother) he comes across as callous and uncaring. At the end of "My name is Lucy Barton" we learn that Lucy and William get divorced and remarried to other people but obviously, they always stay in touch, last but not least because they have two daughters together.

Well, we really get to know William in this third (hopefully not final! I want more family insights from Chrissy and/or Becka) book, including his family history. While it didn’t make me fall in love with him, he certainly became a more sympathetic character, and I understood the dynamics of his and Lucy’s friendship and marriage much better.

Highly recommended to fans of Elizabeth Strout (and who isn’t among my friends?!) and Kent Haruf. (less)

Oh William! is the third of Elizabeth Strout’s novels to feature Lucy Barton. This novel focuses on Lucy in her sixties and her relationship with her ex-husband, the titular William.
Lucy still has a fond yet exasperated relationship with William, the father of their two adult daughters, as she mourns her beloved second husband, David. Their marriage was not easy, punctuated by Willian’s serial affairs and finally end by Lucy having an affair of her own. William was, and is, a distant character, physically and mentally often not present in their relationship. Oh William! Is a phrase Lucy often uses to sum up her frustration.
As the novel progresses, William’s third wife leaves him, he discovers more about his parents’ marriage and that he has a half sister who was abandoned by his mother. This culminates in a road trip by Lucy and William is the town of his birth to find out more.
Elizabeth Strout’s writing style is episodic and sparse, almost diary like, as Lucy explores her marriages and her ongoing relationship with William. Despite her successful career she feels like she is invisible and has used William as an authority figure. This largely stems from her incredibly poor and deprived background, which was explored more in the earlier novels. The journey, and her meeting with his half sister, gives her the courage to be more substantial and finally reduces her reliance on William. There is no great dénouement, but a sense of quiet triumph and a future of possibility. This is a wonderful, considerate novel, which really made me think and re-read at many points.
Thank you to #netgalley and #penguinrandom for allowing me to review this ARC

This is the third novel featuring Lucy but although there are chunks of her life she refers to in the book, this can be read as a standalone.

The character Lucy Barton is a novelist writing about her life with her first husband William. She goes through her experiences currently with him trying to find a half sister he didn't know existed but also reminisces about her life with him as her first husband.

I enjoyed this to start off with and it is short and easy enough to read quickly but I was just a bit annoyed by the writing style. It is written as a disjointed diary, so often memories are prefaced with a comment like:

"But here is something I had not thought of until William called and spoke to me of the party" followed by a colon.

Now I guess as a diary this would work but people don't often read other people's diaries so if the fictional Lucy wanted to write about her life with William, surely, as a published author, she would be a much better writer?! It was just a tad erksome when reading, making it disjointed, though easy enough to follow. I think when an author draws attention to the craft of writing too much, the belief in the character starts to disappear. The use of the title in her exclamations about William grew tiresome too! Oh William!

If you enjoyed Strout's first two novels featuring Lucy Barton, I would recommend this novel for sure. The history of William's parents was very interesting and the highlight of the book for me, I just was not a particular fan of Lucy!

I love Elizabeth Strout's writing style and Oh William is beautifully written. I hadn't realised that this was a book in a series when I requested it but I found that I could pick up what had happened before and it didn't spoil my enjoyment of the book.

It's a quick read but has some hard hitting moments. Oh William is a novel of family, love, relationships and loss.

This is not my normal type of book, I'm a bit of a murder freak, but I enjoy Lucy Barton's books as they are soothing to the soul.
This outing is about her ex husband William. It is set in the period just after her husband has died and we see that although they divorced many years before, they are very good friends.
The reader is given the backgrounds to both Lucy and William and their family. We see Lucy's insecurities and the reasons why she left William. We see why Lucy has always felt invisible and an imposter in her life.
An enjoyable and very easy to read book.

Not for me. I made a mistake choosing the latest book in a series I hadn't read before. It was difficult picking up references to things that had happened previously and hard to care about Lucy's past, even though part of it was traumatic. Elizabeth Strout has a lively writing style but I found the story hard going.

Wow. This book is just... It's just gorgeous in its bittersweet intoxication. If you are familiar with the prize-wining author, Elizabeth Strout, you will know what to expect - a fascinating lead character (in this case, the divorced and widowed middle aged Lucy Barton who has risen from poverty in the US to a successful writing career) and a deeply affecting study into her motivations and beliefs, and the same of those who surround her.

Much like the mesmeric Olive Kitteridge, Olive Again, My Name is Lucy Barton and others, Elizabeth creates complex, nuanced characters through whom we can examine the coincidences and misfortunes of life , the highs and lows, the expected and the right-out-of-the-blue surprises that define life for us all.

Here, for Lucy, as she mourns the recent death of her second husband, she is pulled into revelations about the family of her first husband (and the father of her two girls). As the former husband and wife set out o investigate Williams' recent ancestry, it gives her the opportunity to reflect on marriage, what it is to be known, the hidden secrets in us all, and how we find peace and let go.

Absolutely stunning. Id recommend this to anyone. An extraordinary writer at the top of her game.

Elizabeth Strout is terrific writer. That shouldn’t be news to anyone. Her prose is elegant, her turn of phrase precise and memorable. But it’s her incredible ability with character that sets her apart. The most memorable of these, to me at least, is Olive Kitteredge but Lucy Barton must run a close second.
This is the third novel to feature Lucy, this time focuses on her in her 60s and reminiscing on her first marriage to William and their lives together, as William learns some dramatic revelations about his own past. I found it to be the least effective of the Lucy novels and yet I’ve found it difficult to quite put my finger on why.
Lucy is, admittedly, a little harder to empathise with than Olive and it perhaps makes her books a little more ‘difficult’. She’s had a tough childhood by anyone’s standards and this has led her to be a rather closed-off individual with an occasional but distinctive streak of self-pity. (Yet you can see here the sheer power of Strout’s work that one can sit and make these rather definitive statements about her characters. Within mere pages of picking up one of Strout’s books she’s sold you on the absolute real existence of these people.)
Part of the problem, for me anyway, is that Oh William! doesn’t seem to offer anything new. There’s some great set pieces and the extended Barton family are all drawn with great verisimilitude but I finished the book without feeling that I’d gained all that much. It seemed to tread a very familiar path to the first Lucy book in particular, with a deliberate echoing of themes and subjects from that novel.
But maybe that’s not the point. Perhaps you just pick up a Lucy Barton novel, not for the ideas or the social themes but merely to spend a few enjoyable hours in the company of a collection of vividly realised and largely companionable characters (although like Lucy herself, William takes a little getting used to at points). But if you go into the novel without your expectations raised too highly, you’re pretty much guaranteed to have an enjoyable time.

When I read My Name is Lucy Barton I was struck by what a timid, retiring woman Lucy Barton came across as. The first-person narration was notable for what it didn't say, the narrator's style being one of presenting the reader with some facts, or a vignette, then drawing a conclusion from them. Already in that book, I came away thinking that there were some serious mismatches between the pictures Lucy painted and the emotions she claimed and the conclusions she came to. This is explored further in the follow-up Oh, William!

Lucy as she presents herself to us is a reserved, quiet woman who reveals only tantalising glimpses into the events in her life, never mind the underlying motivation for her actions and the feelings she claims. She repeatedly says she feels invisible and she comes across as a ghostly figure, flitting in and out of focus, ungraspable. And yet she rises above a hard start in life to win a college scholarship and become a successful and popular writer, claiming not to have any understanding of popular culture because of her insular and culturally deprived upbringing but travelling the world to promote her books, living in New York. She has had two marriages, the second a very happy one. She is close to her daughters and looking forward to becoming a grandmother. Her ex-husband says he married her because she radiated joy and exuberance.

So is she giving us a true picture of how she sees herself? Has her strange childhood forever distanced her from the world she lives in, to an almost schizophrenic degree? Is her ageing memory playing tricks on her? Or is this a woman who has yet to come to terms with the imperfections of her life and is trying to whitewash some things she is not quite able to accept?

The focus of the first book is the lifelong effect of her harsh upbringing in extreme poverty by a father with PTSD and a mother who seems unaffectionate to the point of cruelty. She escapes that early life of penury, harsh punishments, makeshift living in a garage with no amenities, when she wins a college scholarship and there meets William, her first husband and ostensibly the subject of this second novel. It is never made especially clear why Lucy left William, whom she says was the first person ever to make her feel safe, her home with him the only place that has ever felt like home to her. We know he is a sometimes emotionally unavailable man who has affairs throughout their marriage and his subsequent ones; we know how desperately upset their daughters were at the split and how they blamed her for walking out, yet by the second book, when Lucy is in her late 60s, they appear close and loving, without much detail about how and when that changed. William too still habitually confides in Lucy and seems to trust her and use her as a sounding board. When his third wife leaves him after his 70th birthday, citing his emotional distance which is also something Lucy mentions a number of times, he takes up genealogy and discovers a half-sister he never knew about, and talks Lucy into going on road trip with him to see where she (and his mother) grew up.

Although a very different character to Olive Kitteridge, another of Elizabeth Strout's incredible female characters, Lucy too is fascinating and expertly and sympathetically drawn - another ageing woman facing some facts about her life and her character, and rethinking some long-held assumptions. The narration is masterful. Each paragraph draws us into nuggets of her life story, leaving us curious for more; her observations about why she is telling us this or that snippet later coalescing to weave a tapestry more significant for its gaps and inconsistencies than a consistent sense of what drives her. The road trip brings a great deal of reflection about her life, but whether it brings more clarity is debatable, especially given how all along, apparent certainties are repeatedly cast in doubt. Perhaps, as she says on the final page, 'we are all mythologies, mysterious. We are all mysteries, is what I mean. This may be the only thing in the world I know to be true.'

This is another unmissable novel from a world-class author at her peak.

‘Oh William, I thought. Oh William!’

I am intrigued. After reading ‘Oh William!’ I realised that I should have started at the beginning, by reading ‘My name is Lucy Barton’ and then ‘Anything is Possible’. I feel like I know Lucy Barton, after reading ‘Oh William!” but I want to know her better: all those references to her earlier story have me intrigued. Oh yes, it is possible to read ‘Oh William!’ as a standalone: it is a story about family and about secrets, largely self-contained. But I have a feeling that my appreciation of this novel will be deepened once I have had an opportunity to read the earlier novels in the series.

Lucy Barton is now 63 years old, and recently widowed. David Abramson, her late husband, is a man with whom she felt comfortable. They understood each other, they supported each other. The William of the title is Lucy’s first husband, the father of their now adult daughters, Chrissy and Becka. William has married three times and has not been faithful to any of his wives. And now his third wife has left him. William is now 71, and despite their marriage breakdown and subsequent marriages, Lucy and William have remained friends. And so, it is to Lucy William turns when he wants help with unravelling a family secret.

Lucy and William embark on a journey, into a past that William was unaware of and into a shared past which has Lucy sharing her insights and reflections. I enjoyed this novel, although I wanted to shake William more than once along the way.

Recommended.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Books for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

With Oh William! author Elizabeth Strout has written another story around one of her literary characters Lucy Barton. Lucy is a successful writer living in New York and is in this book navigating the second half of her life as a recent widow and parent to her two adult daughters Chrissy and Becka. A surprise encounter leads her to reconnect with William, her first husband - and longtime, on-again-off-again friend and confidante. In this novel Lucy tells the reader about their college years, the birth of their daughters, the painful dissolution of their marriage, and the lives they built with other people. It is a portrait of a tender, complex, decades-long partnership.

Right from the start it feels like I'm visiting an elderly lady, Lucy. I'm sitting on her couch and she's telling me about her first husband William. But it's hard for her not to get sidetracked, because everything is so entwined. After all these years, every little part of her life and being has been influenced by William. The lovely and cosy style Elizabeth Strout has especially gives the impression that I am indeed Lucy's confidante, that she finally has someone to tell her story to. Or as she says, William's story. Sighing from time to time "Oh William!"

I have really enjoyed listening to Lucy's story. Even though the style had me captivated, I was not blown away by the plot. Even though it touches on some quite emotional themes like love and loss, I was not exactly moved by it. Although I did laugh from time to time at the childish behaviour William shows or the witty responses Lucy has. All in all I think I just did not really like the two main characters. Perhaps the age gap between me and the protagonists is just a little too wide.

But let me express again that I do love Elizabeth Strout's writing style. She has a very warm and loving way of telling a story, without it seeming too easy or cheap. She has a delicate way of making every day subjects interesting, while she works her magic.

(Thanks to NetGalley, Penguin Books and Elizabeth Strout for providing me with an advanced review copy.)

Elizabeth Strout has contributed significantly to my favourites bookshelf with her two unforgettable characters: Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton. Both women were crafted from the discerning and expressive observational talent of Elizabeth Strout. Lucy Barton spent her early life in abject poverty, an extreme situation that shaped her personality and life expectations. Throughout her previous books, (“My name is Lucy Barton” and “Anything is Possible”) we watched as this sensitive, doubting, and inconspicuous woman took courageous steps out of grim poverty to become a writer, a mother and a husband.

“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.”

Oh William is the third book in the Lucy Barton story where she is sixty-three years old and recently widowed to her second husband David Abramson. David was her soulmate, someone she understood and who understood her. Lucy’s reflection back into her marriage with David is touching with its deep appreciation and loving support each provided in coming to terms with trauma, guilt and companionship, and the emotional sense of loss.

William, of book-title recognition, is Lucy’s first husband and father to their daughters, Chrissy and Becka. He was difficult to reach emotionally and a man who cheated on each of his three wives. While separated by different partners and a broken marriage, Lucy and William somehow remained friends. When William, now seventy-one, discovers complex family issues, he asks Lucy to return to the family home in Maine. The double entendre of a personal journey of discovery, within a travel journey, provides the theme for Lucy and William to explore deep underlying issues, coming to terms with the choices they made or did not, and an appreciation of their value and achievements.

Elizabeth Strout has this ability to connect us to her characters, which I have eagerly done with Olive and Lucy. The slight frustration with this book was that I couldn’t connect as easily with Lucy this time. I don’t know if the magic had slipped or my mood wasn’t right. Nevertheless, if you have followed Lucy Barton, then you can’t let this one go. If you have enjoyed Elizabeth Strout’s introspective characterisations, then this novel provides a further opportunity to soak in the beautifully crafted personalities that live through her work. I would recommend this book, and I want to thank Random House Publishing, Penguin UK, Viking Books and NetGalley for providing me with a free ARC in return for an honest review.