It's my turn to host a stop on this blog tour today
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| Penguin Viking 21 October 2021 Lucy Barton #3 My thanks to the publishers for the copy of this book and the invitation to the blog tour |
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, Strout weaves a portrait, stunning in its subtlety, of a tender, complex, decades-long partnership.
Those who have followed Lucy Barton's story in My Name is Lucy Barton and Anything Is Possible will be delighted to meet up again with Lucy and share her inimitable strength as she recounts this latest chapter in her life in which we meet her as she reconnects with her first husband, William. Lucy's relationship with William is complicated, each recognises a missing link in the other and yet their lives have moved into other areas and whilst that link is sometimes fractured when the need arises, each is there for the other. In this latest novel, William is at a crossroads in his life, and as the story starts to unfold so we begin to have a better understanding of what makes this rather melancholy man act, and react, in the way he does.
I think what Oh William! brings to the literary table in this gentle continuation is the fact that although we think we know someone really well, we can never be truly sure just what elements of guilt, grief or trauma they carry within them. Filled with subtle nuances of silent introspection, we move through the story alongside Lucy and William as they start to unravel some shocking elements of their lives which have previously been hidden from the other.
Beautifully characterised, and with the author's trademark ability to get right into the human psyche, Oh William! is a quietly reflective piece of writing and a worthy continuation of the series.
Elizabeth Strout is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author od Olive Ketteridge, as well as The Burgess Boys, Abide with Me, Amy and Isabelle, My name is Lucy Barton, Anything is Possible and Olive. again. She has also been nominated for the PEN/Faulkener Award, the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize. She lives in Maine.
Twitter @LizStrout #OhWilliam
@VikingBooksUK @PenguinUKBooks
@GeorgiaKTaylor
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