Oh William! Synopsis
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge and My Name is Lucy Barton explores the mysteries of marriage and the secrets we keep, as a former couple reckons with where they've come from-and what they've left behind.
ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air
"Elizabeth Strout is one of my very favorite writers, so the fact that Oh William! may well be my favorite of her books is a mathematical equation for joy. The depth, complexity, and love contained in these pages is a miraculous achievement."-Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House
I would like to say a few things about my first husband, William.
Lucy Barton is a writer, but her ex-husband, William, remains a hard man to read. William, she confesses, has always been a mystery to me. Another mystery is why the two have remained connected after all these years. They just are.
So Lucy is both surprised and not surprised when William asks her to join him on a trip to investigate a recently uncovered family secret-one of those secrets that rearrange everything we think we know about the people closest to us. There are fears and insecurities, simple joys and acts of tenderness, and revelations about affairs and other spouses, parents and their children. On every page of this exquisite novel we learn more about the quiet forces that hold us together-even after we've grown apart.
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Time, Vulture, She Reads
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780812989434 |
| Publication date: |
19th October 2021 |
| Author: |
Elizabeth Strout |
| Publisher: |
Random House an imprint of Random House Publishing Group |
| Format: |
Hardback |
| Pagination: |
240 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Romance / Relationship Stories
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| Other Genres: |
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Elizabeth Strout Press Reviews
One proof of Elizabeth Strout's greatness is the sleight of hand with which she injects sneaky subterranean power into seemingly transparent prose. Strout works in the realm of everyday speech, conjuring repetitions, gaps and awkwardness with plain language and forthright diction, yet at the same time unleashing a tidal urgency that seems to come out of nowhere even as it operates in plain sight -- Jennifer Egan - New York Times
Strout is not only mercilessly funny on the page, she's also unerringly precise about the long-term effects of loneliness, parental neglect and betrayal . . . The final scene between William and Lucy has been carouselling in my mind for days now . . . devastating and vital, bleak and tender - Sunday Times
What sets Strout's work apart is her characterisation . . . Long on empathy while steering clear of sentimentality, her prose bears the minerality of a crisp white wine, with a seeming simplicity that belies its profound power - FT
A very good novel, deft when it needs to be and ambivalent where certainty would be facile. Its celebration of the ungraspable riddles and sudden judgments of real life becomes compulsive. . . . I cannot get Lucy Barton out of my head - The Times
[Strout] is a novelist of the inner sensibility, and what makes her so compellingly readable is her rendering of the ebb and flow of emotion and impression, of the stream of consciousness between past and present that makes Lucy cousin to Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway - Daily Telegraph
Strout is very good at parsing the contradictory elements that make up our relationship with ourselves and the lives we lead, and the extent to which these elements exist in a state of flux. Such a pleasure to read. And so very wise - Daily Mail
Strout gets you to reassess every relationship you've ever had while you can still do something about it - Spectator
Elizabeth Strout is one of my very favorite writers, so the fact that Oh William! may well be my favorite of her books is a mathematical equation for joy. The depth, complexity, and love contained in these pages is a miraculous achievement -- Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House The end lines of this novel from the staggeringly gifted Elizabeth Strout are a revelation - a profound understanding of our relationships, ourselves . . . A luminous novel about love, loss and family secrets; hard to believe a writer can fathom us so well - Sainsbury's Magazine
About Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth Strout is the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge, as well as The Burgess Boys, a New York Times bestseller, Abide With Me and Amy and Isabelle, which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize. She lives in New York City and Portland, Maine.
More About Elizabeth Strout
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