Great flow Nonprentious but deep novel. Subtle and accessible. Doesn't try too hard to be literary but succeeds anyway due to an honest, steady narrative that rings true. Dives right in on page one and masterfully makes you feel like you have settled into the story already.
Characters may seem unusual if you are not familiar with 'blue collar' societies from an older era, but I found them very authentic. Lucy herself sounds like a real woman - complex and believeable.
After loving Olive Kitteridge I was looking forward to another story that would grab me in a similar way but this book did not. The characters were strangely abstract and hard to empathize with.
MY NAME IS LUCY. Not a cohesive story. It lacks the substance, the goal for the book and story of the lives of its characters. Nor do characters relate to each other, especially-relatives. The activities in a book jump from one period in time to another, without letting us absorb what exactly did happen... We do not learn anything about Mother figure nor about Lucy's daughters. We found out a bit about the past of her father...It seems, Lucy is at death bed some years ago, but do not know what her illness is. Lucy's mother is visiting her there at the hospital, but she is sitting there silently, mostly. There is no conversation between the two of them, to speak of. Writing is OK, but not brilliant. I wouldn't recommend it to my friends.
My name is Lucy Barton I loved this book from the first page. I thought it was beautifully written and the characters had depth. I read it in a couple of days.
mother and daughter rang true Narrator seems much easier to relate to than Olive Kitteridge by the same author. I appreciated the nuances of tension but also love between the narrator and her difficult mother.