Mind Picker: My Name Is Lucy Barton

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 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 completely free from terror, I realize I don't know how others are. So much of life seems speculation.

My Name is Lucy Barton is a deceptively simple book: Lucy is a successful novelist who decides to write a book about the time (twenty or so years earlier) that she was hospitalised with a mystifying infection for nine weeks and her estranged mother came to sit at her bedside for five days. Their relationship is so strange and strained, conversation halting completely if Lucy attempts to say anything personal, and yet, Lucy (a married mother of two young girls that her own mother doesn't even ask about) luxuriates in her mother's attentions; often squealing and giggling and reverting to childish behaviour. Very little actually happens in this short book (less than 200 small pages), and yet, everything happens: I don't know if I've read a better treatment of the bizarre threads that bind a family together. This will necessarily be spoilery from here.

This little story flits around the timeline, with Lucy describing her life and friends in New York City just before she was hospitalised, brief looks back at her childhood in rural Illinois, a writer's workshop she attends while her kids are still little (where she first shares some of the writing that will eventually become this book), the stories of how each of her parents eventually passes away, how her marriage eventually ends, and her present relationship with her daughters. But central to everything is her mother sitting in a chair at the foot of Lucy's hospital bed, and their conversations that primarily focussed on the unhappy marriages that the women from their hometown found themselves suffering through. Throughout this unexpected visit, there are things that Lucy desperately wants to say – memories from her childhood that she would love to talk over with her Mommy – but both women skirt the danger; even Lucy's father is only mentioned once in passing.

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.

Lucy's childhood isn't gone into in great detail, but what we do learn is rather horrifying: For her first eleven years, Lucy and her parents and her two older siblings lived in their great uncle's garage; a room without heat and with a finicky cold water sink. Their father had been damaged in WWII and had trouble keeping a job, so the family was poor: no TV or books (that made Lucy grow up without any knowledge of pop culture); teachers would complain that the children were dirty (even poor people can afford a bar of soap, can't they?); they often had just molasses on bread for dinner; and when young Lucy needed to be babysat, she was just locked in the truck to spend the day cold and crying. There was also a poverty of spirit – Lucy notes that no one ever told her that you don't speak with your mouth full or what would be an impolite question to ask a stranger; she was absolutely unprepared to make her way out into the world. And this is not even to mention the Thing (something so terrible that Lucy never talked about it to anyone and only ever wrote it down once to show a therapist). Yet, while sitting in the hospital, all of this history is hovering like a cloud over the two women; something dark and dangerous and absolutely unspeakable. This danger, combined with Lucy's oddly childish behaviour, makes for such a unique reading experience: I utterly recognised the truth of this relationship, and while I was never locked in a truck as a child, it felt all of a piece; these tragic specifics make the universal case.

The fact that Lucy is meant to be a successful author adds another layer of interest: she is attempting to be so honest about her memories that they are often hesitant and uncertain. After one of the most potent childhood stories – when her father and brother had a run-in (that ends with the bizarre image of her father rocking her teenaged brother in his arms) – Lucy remembers in the aftermath:

I took Vicky away in the fields until it was dark and we became more afraid of the dark than of our home. I am still not sure it's a true memory, except I do know it, I think. I mean: It is true. Ask anyone who knew us.

So in the end, this book is all about its restrained and careful writing and the remarkable mood that Elizabeth Strout is able to achieve. A childhood is like a spider's web: you may think it's flimsy enough to brush away, but with a tensile strength greater than that of steel, it has claws.

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.

I take it as a given that, despite my best efforts, I am ruining my children every day. I was never locked in a truck, I have never locked my girls in a truck, but it's all relative: we all love to hold onto ancient injustices and pick at their edges until they sting again. Funny that I was thinking about this a couple of weeks ago -- long before Lucy Barton -- and I asked Kennedy, "Do you and your sister ever sit up late at night, complaining about all the awful things your parents have done to you?"

Kennedy looked offended and said, "Never. Me and Mal were up late last night talking about quilts." And she changed the subject so quickly -- to the pretty quilt she had seen at Pottery Barn and the bedding Mal saw that she thinks she'd like to bring to Residence next year -- that she was either too uncomfortable to acknowledge the looming cloud of resentment that she feels hanging over our own relationship, or she really meant that they never do complain about us. Perhaps they have no major complaints; perhaps the complaints are too painful for my girls to even discuss amongst themselves; perhaps a mother is never meant to know.

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