She returns to them here like a supplicant at her prayer book: begging to understand them even just a little bit more. Loneliness and longing were Strout’s big themes in “Lucy Barton” and its followup. (This may be the only novel about a novelist that does not remotely concern itself with her writing, publishing or craft.) This is the third in a series of novels (following “ My Name Is Lucy Barton” and “Anything Is Possible”) revolving around the Illinois-born daughter of emotionally unreachable parents, raised in an unheated garage but now ensconced among the fruits of success as a novelist in New York City. Straightforward goes down so easy and feels so refreshing.Īll of which makes reading “Oh William!” like coming home to a sensibility that is so smartly deployed it might go unnoticed. Other novelists must berate themselves when they see what Strout pulls off without any tacky pyrotechnics. Strout doesn’t dress language up in a tuxedo when a wool sweater will suffice. Her exclamation points (there are many) are the little stabs of intensity our emotions cycle through each day. Where a simple phrase will do, it does: “I was so happy.” “ Oh he is just so lonely!” “What a strange thing life is.” Lucy Barton in particular, the narrator - again - of Strout’s new novel, “Oh William!,” announces her reactions with the vocabulary of, well, a regular person. Even in her novels’ darkest moments, there’s a soft, periwinkle feeling. There is a quietude to her prose - even with scowly, persnickety characters like Olive Kitteridge - that exudes calm devotion. I imagine Elizabeth Strout scrawling out her novels longhand in some serene room in coastal Maine, a party of white pines standing tall outside her window.
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