Oh William! By Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth Strout is an author who feels more like a dear old friend, or that cousin you like to be seated next to at a wedding. Her writing is both accessible and complex, as are the characters she creates. Oh William! is the story of Lucy Barton as a woman who has divorced her cheating first husband, remarried, and lost her second to cancer. It is a family novel, examining the relationships between both parents, children, and their extended family, and it is a love story, though not a romance. As many of Strout’s books do, it is sprinkled with historical fact that shaped the lives of the people living through events… like the POW camps in Maine, but the characters of the novel. The result is characters so authentic that I found myself looking to see if I was reading memoir.
At the heart of the novel is the secrets kept by both William, the cheating husband with whom Lucy retains a lovely friendship, and recently widowed Lucy. The big secret that they investigate doesn’t feel any more important than the dozens of other revelations these characters give in this captivating book. Fans of Lucy Barton and Olive Kittredge will not be disappointed. Newcomers will be charmed by Lucy’s quirkiness. And everyone will be saying “Oh William!”
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