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551. My Name is Lucy Barton

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:  Elizabeth Strout

Genre:   Fiction

193 pages, published January 12, 2016

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

While Lucy Barton, the titular protagaonist, is in a New York City hospital recovering slowly from an confounding infection following an appendectomy, her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for many years, comes to visit and stay with her.  Through mulitiple conversations, Lucy and her mother navigate a difficult past relationship and come to an understanding that finally brings some peace to Lucy.

Quotes 

“It interests me how we find ways to feel superior to another person, another group of people. It happens everywhere, and all the time. Whatever we call it, I think it’s the lowest part of who we are, this need to find someone else to put down.”

 

 “Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me.”

 

 “You will have only one story,” she had said. “You’ll write your one story many ways. Don’t ever worry about story. You have only one.”

 

“Then I understood I would never marry him. It’s funny how one thing can make you realize something like that. One can be ready to give up the children one always wanted, one can be ready to withstand remarks about one’s past, or one’s clothes, but then—a tiny remark and the soul deflates and says: Oh.”

 

“Because we all love imperfectly.”

 

“But I think I know so well the pain we children clutch to our chests, how it lasts our whole lifetime, with longings so large you can’t even weep. We hold it tight, we do, with each seizure of the beating heart: This is mine, this is mine, this is mine.”

“But the books brought me things. This is my point. They made me feel less alone.”

 

“You are wasting time by suffering twice. I mention this only to show how many things the mind cannot will itself to do, even if it wants to.”

 

“This must be the way most of us maneuver through the world, half knowing, half not, visited by memories that can’t possibly be true.”

 

“No one in this world comes from nothing.”

 

“I kept thinking how the five of us had had a really unhealthy family, but I saw then too how our roots were twisted so tenaciously around one another’s hearts.”

 

“I have sometimes been sad that Tennessee Williams wrote that line for Blanche DuBois, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Many of us have been saved many times by the kindness of strangers, but after a while it sounds trite, like a bumper sticker. And that’s what makes me sad, that a beautiful and true line comes to be used so often that it takes on the superficial sound of a bumper sticker.”

 

“I suspect I said nothing because I was doing what I have done most of my life, which is to cover for the mistakes of others when they don’t know they have embarrassed themselves. I do this, I think, because it could be me a great deal of the time.”

 

“… and that was when I learned that work gets done if you simply do it.”

 

“My more tenderhearted daughter, Becka, said to me during this time, “Mom, when you write a novel you get to rewrite it, but when you live with someone for twenty years, that is the novel, and you can never write that novel with anyone again!”

 

“There are times now, and my life has changed so completely, that I think back on the early years and I find myself thinking: It was not that bad. Perhaps it was not. But there are times, too—unexpected—when walking down a sunny sidewalk, or watching the top of a tree bend in the wind, or seeing a November sky close down over the East River, I am suddenly filled with the knowledge of darkness so deep that a sound might escape from my mouth, and I will step into the nearest clothing store and talk with a stranger about the shape of sweaters newly arrived. This must be the way most of us maneuver through the world, half knowing, half not, visited by memories that can’t possibly be true. But when I see others walking with confidence down the sidewalk, as though they are free completely from terror, I realize I don’t know how others are. So much of life seems speculation.”

 

“Sarah Payne, the day she told us to go to the page without judgment, reminded us that we never knew, and never would know, what it would be like to understand another person fully.”

 

“I took myself—secretly, secretly—very seriously! I knew I was a writer. I didn’t know how hard it would be. But no one knows that; and that does not matter.)”

 

“It has been my experience throughout life that the people who have been given the most by our government—education, food, rent subsidies—are the ones who are most apt to find fault with the whole idea of government.”

 

 “She said that her job as a writer of fiction was to report on the human condition, to tell us who we are and what we think and what we do.”

 

“A person gets tired. The mind or the soul or whatever word we have for whatever is not just the body gets tired, and this, I have decided, is—usually, mostly—nature helping us. I was getting tired. I think—but I don’t know—that he was getting tired too.”

 

“At times these days I think of the way the sun would set on the farmland around our small house in the autumn. A view of the horizon, the whole entire circle of it, if you turned, the sun setting behind you, the sky in front becoming pink and soft, then slightly blue again, as though it could not stop going on in its beauty, then the land closest to the setting sun would get dark, almost black against the orange line of horizon, but if you turn around, the land is still available to the eye with such softness, the few trees, the quiet fields of cover crops already turned, and the sky lingering, lingering, then finally dark. As though the soul can be quiet for those moments. All life amazes me.”

 

“I think of Jeremy telling me I had to be ruthless to be a writer. And I think how I did not go visit my brother and sister and my parents because I was always working on a story and there was never enough time. (But I didn’t want to go either.) There never was enough time, and then later I knew if I stayed in my marriage I would not write another book, not the kind I wanted to, and there is that as well. But really, the ruthlessness, I think, comes in grabbing onto myself, in saying: This is me, and I will not go where I can’t bear to go—to Amgash, Illinois—and I will not stay in a marriage when I don’t want to, and I will grab myself and hurl onward through life, blind as a bat, but on I go! This is the ruthlessness, I think.”

 

“What I mean is, this is not just a woman’s story. It’s what happens to a lot of us, if we are lucky enough to hear that detail and pay attention”

 

“Black Hawk was taken on a tour of cities after his capture. I read his autobiography as soon as I could. And I remembered the line he said: “How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.”

 

“But once in a while I see a child crying with the deepest of desperation, and I think it is one of the truest sounds a child can make.”

 

“Do I understand that hurt my children feel? I think I do, though they might claim otherwise. But I think I know so well the pain we children clutch to our chests, how it lasts our whole lifetime, with longings so large you can’t even weep. We hold it tight, we do, with each seizure of the beating heart: this is mine, this is mine, this is mine.”

 

“There is that constant judgment in this world: How are we going to make sure we do not feel inferior to another?”

 

My Take

After reading and really enjoying three previous books by the Pulitizer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kitteridge, Olive Again, and The Burgess Boys), I picked this book up from the “Librarian Recommends” section of my wonderful Boulder Public Library.  While not quite as good as the other Strout books that I have read, I did really enjoy “My Name is Lucy Barton.”  Strout has a lot of insight into the human condition and writes in such a way that you become engrossed in the lives of the characters and want to see what happens to them.

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545. The Burgess Boys

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Elizabeth Strout

Genre:   Fiction

320 pages, published Matrch 26, 2013

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

The Burgess Boys tells the story of siblings Jim, Bob and Susan Burgess, Susan’s son Zach, Bob’s ex-wife Pam and Jim’s wife Helen.  Every member of the Burgess family has grown up under the shadow of a freak accident that killed their father when they were children, an event which has shaped their lives.  Bob and Jim escaped their hometown of Shirley Falls, Maine to encamp in New York City where both practiced law, Jim becoming one of the top lawyers in the city and Bob working for a Legal Aid group.  While he revels in all the trappings of success, Jim constantly belittles his younger, bighearted brother Bob.  When teenaged Zach is accused of a hate crime, the entire family rallies to his defense, exposing old fault lines in their relationships and opening new ones.

Quotes 

“And it was too late. No one wants to believe something is too late, but it is always becoming too late, and then it is.”

 

“You have family”, Bob said. “You have a wife who hates you. Kids who are furious with you. A brother and sister who make you insane. And a nephew who used to be kind of a drip but apparently is not so much of a drip now. That’s called family”.”

 

In case you haven’t noticed, people get hard-hearted against the people they hurt. Because they can’t stand it. Literally. To think we did that to someone. I did that. So we think of all the reasons why it’s okay we did whatever we did.”

 

“The facts didn’t matter. Their stories mattered, and each of their stories belonged to each of them alone.”

 

“I wrote the story, but you will bring to it your own experience of life, and some other reader will do the same, and it will become a different story with each reader. I believe that even the time in your life when you read the book will determine how you receive it. Our lives are changing constantly, and therefore not even our own story is always what we think it is.”

 

“And she learned – freshly, scorchingly – of the privacy of sorrow. It was as though she had been escorted through a door into some large and private club that she had not even known existed. Women who miscarried. Society did not care much for them. It really didn’t. And the women in the club mostly passed each other silently. People outside the club said, “You’ll have another one.”

 

“So she lay awake at night and at times there was a curious peacefulness to this, the darkness warm as though the deep violet duvet held its color unseen, wrapping around Pam some soothing aspect of her youth, as her mind wandered over a life that felt puzzingly long; she experienced a quiet surprise that so many lifetimes could be fit into one.”

 

“That happens in hotel rooms, people have bad dreams.”

 

“No exchange rate for the confidence of youth.”

 

“It was a sad moment. There are sad moments in life, and this was one of them.”

 

“Bob was not a young man, and he knew about loss. He knew the quiet that arrived, the blinding force of panic, and he knew that each loss brought with it some odd, barely acknowledged sense of release. He was not an especially contemplative person, and he did not dwell on this. But by October there were many days when the swell of rightness, loose-limbedness, and gentle gravity came to him. It recalled to him being a child, when he found one day he could finally color within the lines.”

 

“Pam replied that she was too old to worry about being cool, but in fact she did worry about it, and that’s one reason it was always nice to see Bobby, who was so uncool as to inhabit—in Pam’s mind—his own private condominium of coolness.”

 

“He knew the quiet that arrived, the blinding force of panic, and he knew too that each loss brought with it some odd, barely acknowledged sense of relief.”

 

“Nothing is what you imagine. Her mind hovered above this simple and alarming thought. The variables were too great, the particularities too distinct, life a flood of translations from the shadow-edged yearnings of the heart to the immutable aspects of the physical world.”

 

“For most of the nineteen years of Zachary’s life, Susan had done what parents do when their child turns out to be so different from what they’d imagined—which is to pretend, and pretend, with the wretchedness of hope, that he would be all right. Zach would grow into himself. He’d make friends and take part in life. Grow into it, grow out of it … Variations had played in Susan’s mind on sleepless nights. But her mind had also held the dark relentless beat of doubt: He was friendless, he was quiet, he was hesitant in all his actions, his schoolwork barely adequate. Tests showed an IQ above average, no discernible learning disorders—yet the package of Zachness added up to not quite right. And sometimes Susan’s melody of failure crescendoed with the unbearable knowledge: It was her fault.”

 

“My mother did not like Unitarians; she thought they were atheists who didn’t want to be left out of the fun of Christmas,”

 

“They say that’s what happens as you get older. You think about the things of your youth.”

 

“The United States is a country of laws and not men and that we will provide safety to those who come to us for safety.”

 

My Take

Having previously read and enjoyed Olive Kitteridge and Olive, Again, I was interested in another book by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout.  It took me a while to get into The Burgess Boys (which includes characters that overlap with her Olive books), but once I did, I thoroughly enjoyed it.  A keen observer of human nature, Strout creates such indelible characters and probes the intracies of their relationships in such a masterful manner that the reader feels an intimacy with them that is rare.  I look forward to reading more by this talented and insightful writer.

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537. Olive, Again

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Elizabeth Strout

Genre:  Fiction

289 pages, published October 15, 2019

Reading Format:   e-book on Hoopla

Summary

The sequel to Olive Kitteridge, Olive, Again continues the story of the unique Olive Kitteridge as she enters old age,  struggling to make sense of her own life and the lives of others in the small town of Crosby, Maine.

Quotes 

“I think our job–maybe even our ‘duty’–is to–To bear the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can.”

 

“Because in February the days were really getting longer and you could see it, if you really looked. You could see how at the end of each day the world seemed cracked open and the extra light made its way across the stark trees, and promised. It promised, that light, and what a thing that was.”

 

“And it came to him then that it should never be taken lightly, the essential loneliness of people, that the choices they made to keep themselves from that gaping darkness were choices that required respect.”

 

“When you get old,” Olive told Andrea after the girl had walked away, “you become invisible. It’s just the truth. And yet it’s freeing in a way.”

 

“But we’re both old enough to know things now, and that’s good.” “What things?” “When to shut up, mainly.”

 

 “What frightened him was how much of his life he had lived without knowing who he was or what he was doing. It caused him to feel an inner trembling, and he could not quite find the words—for himself—to even put it exactly as he sensed it. But he sensed that he had lived his life in a way that he had not known. This meant there had been a large blindspot directly in front of his eyes. It meant that he did not understand, not really at all, how others had perceived

 

“God, Olive, you’re a difficult woman. You are such a goddamn difficult woman, and fuck all, I love you. So if you don’t mind, Olive, maybe you could be a little less Olive with me, even if it means being a little more Olive with others. Because I love you, and we don’t have much time.”

 

“And Olive thought about this: the way people can love those they barely know, and how abiding that love can be, and also how deep that love can be, even when—as in her own case—it was temporary. She thought of Betty and her stupid bumper sticker, and the child who had been so frightened that Halima Butterfly had told her about, and yet to tell any of this right now to Betty, who was genuinely suffering—as Olive had suffered—seemed cruel, and she kept silent.”

 

“No. I had enough of babies growing up.” “Never mind. Kids are just a needle in your heart.”

 

“You’re an easy woman to please,” he had said to her. And she had said, “You may be the first person to think that.”

 

“But it was almost over, after all, her life. It swelled behind her like a sardine fishing net, all sorts of useless seaweed and broken bits of shells and the tiny, shining fish—all those hundreds of students she had taught, the girls and boys in high school she had passed in the corridor when she was a high school girl herself (many—most—would be dead by now), the billion streaks of emotion she’d had as she’d looked at sunrises, sunsets, the different hands of waitresses who had placed before her cups of coffee— All of it gone, or about to go.”

 

“I do not have a clue who I have been. Truthfully, I do not understand a thing.”

 

 “When you get old,” Olive told Andrea after the girl had walked away, “you become invisible. It’s just the truth. And yet it’s freeing in a way.”

 

“I am the opposite of a snob.” Jack laughed a long time. “You think being a reverse snob is not being a snob? Olive, you’re a snob.”

 

“And that woman is not politics. She’s a person, and she has every right to be here.”

 

“And so the day they had had together folded over on itself, was done with, gone.”

 

“he was an old man who was talking to himself on a wharf in Portland, Maine, and he could

 

“Stop it! Tell me how it’s really been! He sat back, pushed his glass forward. It’s just the way it was, that’s all. People either didn’t know how they felt about something or they chose never to say how they really felt about something.”

 

“She did not have a family as other people did. Other people had their children come and stay and they talked and laughed and the grandchildren sat on the laps of their grandmothers, and they went places and did things, ate meals together, kissed when they parted.”

 

“Her son had married his mother, as all men—in some form or other—eventually do.”

 

“the way people can love those they barely know, and how abiding that love can be, and also how deep that love can be, even when—as in her own case—it was temporary.”

 

 “thought of the ants that were still going about trying to get their sand wherever they needed it to go. They seemed almost heartbreaking to him, in their tininess and their resilience.”

 

 “Personality disorder? Given the extensive and widespread array of human emotions, why was anything a personality disorder?”

 

“Betty was still weeping, but she was smiling more too, and she said, “Oh, it’s just a life, Olive.” Olive thought about this. She said, “Well, it’s your life. It matters.”

 

My Take

It was a pleasure to revisit the character of Olive Kitteridge.  Through her, author Elizabeth Strout shares so many insightful observances of human nature that I often found myself re-reading portions of the book to make sure I registered what was being said.  If you have read Olive Kitteridge and enjoyed it, then by all means read Olive, Again.

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257. Olive Kitteridge

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Molly Kirk

Author:   Elizabeth Strout

Genre:  Fiction

270 pages, published March 25, 2008

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Olive Kitteridge is a fascinating book that gives the reader keen insights into the human condition.   While Olive Kitteridge, a strong willed, difficult, overbearing retired schoolteacher is the main character, author Elizabeth Strout also explores the lives of several people around Olive.  The brutally honest portrait of ordinary people, with all the happiness, sorrow, pain and conflict that they experience, painted by Strout is remarkable.

 

Quotes 

“You couldn’t make yourself stop feeling a certain way, no matter what the other person did. You had to just wait. Eventually the feeling went away because others came along. Or sometimes it didn’t go away but got squeezed into something tiny, and hung like a piece of tinsel in the back of your mind.”

 

“Traits don’t change, states of mind do.”

 

“Olive’s private view is that life depends on what she thinks of as “big bursts” and “little bursts.” Big bursts are things like marriage or children, intimacies that keep you afloat, but these big bursts hold dangerous, unseen currents. Which is why you need the little bursts as well: a friendly clerk at Bradlee’s, let’s say, or the waitress at Dunkin’ Donuts who knows how you like your coffee. Tricky business, really.”

 

“There were days – she could remember this – when Henry would hold her hand as they walked home, middle-aged people, in their prime. Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful? Most likely not. People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it. But she had that memory now, of something healthy and pure.”

 

“Sometimes, like now, Olive had a sense of just how desperately hard every person in the world was working to get what they needed. For most, it was a sense of safety, in the sea of terror that life increasingly became.”

 

“What young people didn’t know, she thought, lying down beside this man, his hand on her shoulder, her arm; oh, what young people did not know. They did not know that lumpy, aged, and wrinkled bodies were as needy as their own young, firm ones, that love was not to be tossed away carelessly . . . No, if love was available, one chose it, or didn’t chose it. And if her platter had been full with the goodness of Henry and she had found it burdensome, had flicked it off crumbs at a time, it was because she had not know what one should know: that day after day was unconsciously squandered. . . . But here they were, and Olive pictured two slices of Swiss cheese pressed together, such holes they brought to this union–what pieces life took out of you.”

 

“But after a certain point in a marriage, you stopped having a certain kind of fight, Olive thought, because when the years behind you were more than the years in front of you, things were different.”

 

“She didn’t like to be alone. Even more, she didn’t like being with people. ”

 

“And then as the little plane climbed higher and Olive saw spread out below them fields of bright and tender green in this morning sun, farther out the coastline, the ocean shiny and almost flat, tiny white wakes behind a few lobster boats–then Olive felt something she had not expected to feel again: a sudden surging greediness for life. She leaned forward, peering out the window: sweet pale clouds, the sky as blue as your hat, the new green of the fields, the broad expanse of water–seen from up here it all appeared wondrous, amazing. She remembered what hope was, and this was it. That inner churning that moves you forward, plows you through life the way the boats below plowed the shiny water, the way the plane was plowing forward to a place new, and where she was needed.”

 

“Each of his son’s had been his favorite child.”

 

“And yet, standing behind her son, waiting for the traffic light change, she remembered how in the midst of it all there had been a time when she’d felt a loneliness so deep that once, not so many years ago, having a cavity filled, the dentist’s gentle turning of her chin with his soft fingers had felt to her like a tender kindness of almost excruciating depth, and she had swallowed with a groan of longing, tears springing to her eyes.”

 

“He put the blinker on, pulled out onto the avenue. “Well, that was nice,” she said, sitting back. They had fun together these days, they really did. It was as if marriage had been a long, complicated meal, and now there was this lovely dessert.”

 

My Take

When I finished Olive Kitteridge, I was not surprised that it had won the Pulitzer Prize.  Strout writes with such a perceptive understanding of what makes humans tick and the consequential sufferings they endure, that I was deeply affected while reading this book.  Highly recommended.

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