Shadows are never far away

This novel is proof that families are never what they seem on the outside.

I read My Name Is Lucy Barton right after a long crime novel, and perhaps that’s why it felt so disconcertingly intimate. Elizabeth Strout’s book begins in a hospital in New York, where the central character Lucy is unwell, and ruminating. The coldness of the hospital and the ambiguity of her health leave her feeling vulnerable, and aching to be with her daughters again.

Lucy’s mother arrives unexpectedly at the hospital, and central to the story is their tenuous relationship. Having not seen each other for years, their conversations are touching, except when it suddenly gets tense. As a reader, you feel like an intruder, overhearing a mother and daughter reconnect, especially when Lucy longs for her mother’s attention.

The book made me think of my own mother, who turned up the very instant I was hospitalised, the couple of times I’d been in the last decade. Having had a very attentive mother, it hadn’t even occurred to me, until recently, that mothers could be so emotionally distant. Lucy’s mother made me feel nervous for her; you never knew when her mood would turn.

But Lucy seems so comforted by her mother’s presence, especially as they reminisce, and talk about everyone back at home — her siblings, the neighbours, all the gossip from her hometown in rural Illinois. And yet, even as they joke, you can tell that beneath all that banter lies something uneasy — perhaps from not having confronted certain unsettling truths.

When Lucy starts behaving in a child-like manner with her mother, I couldn’t help but find it cloying. As the plot progresses though, everything starts to fall into place, and you see why she is this way. My heart broke a little for Lucy, who so badly wanted her mother to ask about her life — her accomplishments as a writer, her husband, and two daughters.

Things get even clearer through Lucy’s own flooding memories, triggered by the turning up of her mother, and we’re slowly able to piece together her past. Strout is terrifically skilled at creating an air of mystery and knows exactly how to reveal details in a way that the reader is hungry for more of Lucy’s complicated backstory. You learn about the shame and fear she grew up with, her mother’s meanness, her father’s post-traumatic stress from being in the war, and being mercilessly bullied in school for being poor.

While the book is essentially about mothers and daughters, it is also about the small and big ways in which our past shapes our future, and what it took Lucy to become a writer. All that she had to shed, learn, and the resolve it took to become a known writer in a city like New York.

Strout’s brilliance lies in creating these complex characters and capturing the unpredictability and fragility of our moods and emotions. Even as we experience joy, it often takes only the slightest thing for us to fall apart. An old memory, an unsavoury remark, a gesture — we will never know what it might evoke.

Thinking about her childhood — was it really that bad? — Lucy remarks: “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.”

I didn’t get enough of Lucy, especially of her relationship with her husband William. So imagine my excitement when I discovered that this was the first of a four-part series! My Name Is Lucy Barton is proof that families are never what they seem on the outside and that domestic fiction can be riveting.

The author is a Bengaluru-based writer and editor who believes in the power of daily naps. Find her on Instagram @yaminivijayan

Unbound is a monthly column for anyone who likes to take shelter in books, and briefly forget the dreariness of adult life.