book review of william

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Book Reviews

Lucy barton returns — and reconnects with an old love — in 'oh william'.

Heller McAlpin

Elizabeth Strout's latest, her eighth book, had me at the first line: "I would like to say a few things about my first husband, William." The forthright, plainspoken speaker is Lucy Barton, who we came to love in My Name is Lucy Barton (2016) and Anything is Possible (2017), where we learned how she overcame a traumatic, impoverished childhood in Amgash, Illinois, to become a successful writer living in New York City.

In Oh William! Lucy, now 64, is mourning the death of her beloved second husband, a cellist named David Abramson. She finds some welcome distraction in revisiting her relationship with her first husband, William Gerhardt, the philandering father of her two grown daughters. She'd left William, a parasitologist who has never let the women in his life get too close, after nearly 20 years of marriage. But against all odds they have remained friendly. Seven years her senior, he is also experiencing unhappy changes in his life (which I'll leave for the reader to discover), and calls on Lucy to help navigate them.

She tells us that in her grief for David "I have felt grief for William as well. Grief is such a — oh, such a solitary thing; this is the terror of it, I think. It is like sliding down the outside of a really long glass building while nobody sees you."

In this period when their loneliness and vulnerabilities coincide, Lucy agrees to accompany William on a trip to Maine. His mother, Catherine Cole, was born there — though she never returned after leaving her first husband. (She met her second husband, William's father, one of hundreds of German POWs from Hitler's army sent to do farmwork in Maine after the war, when he was working on her first husband's potato farm.) Lucy says she loved her late mother-in-law, who recognized the limitations of her upbringing and took her under her wing — even though Catherine told friends, "This is Lucy, Lucy comes from nothing." It's one of many memories that takes on a new cast in light of what William and Lucy learn about Catherine on their road trip.

'Anything Is Possible' Is Unafraid To Be Gentle

In 'Olive, Again,' Elizabeth Strout Revisits An Old Friend

Like My Name is Lucy Barton, Oh William! is a novel-cum-fictional memoir, a form that beautifully showcases this character's tremendous heart and limpid voice. "Because I am a novelist," Lucy explains in Oh William! , "I have to write this almost like a novel, but it is true — as true as I can make it." Lucy's determination to tell her personal story honestly and without embellishment evokes Hemingway, but also highlights fiction's special access to emotional truths.

A memoir, fictional or otherwise, is only as interesting as its central character, and Lucy Barton could easily hold our attention through many more books. What Strout is trying to get at here — how the past is never truly past, the lasting effects of trauma, and the importance of trying to understand other people despite their essential mystery and unknowability — is neither as straightforward nor as simple as at first appears. Oh William! explores William and Lucy's relationship, past and present, with impressive nuance and subtlety — including their early attraction, their missteps, their deep, abiding memories and ties, and their lingering susceptibility, vulnerability, and dependence on each other.

You needn't have read Strout's previous books about Lucy Barton to appreciate this one — though, chances are, you'll want to. ( Anything is Possible, like her Olive Kitteridge novels, is made up of linked stories.) Brief recaps of Lucy's history are deftly woven into Oh William! , which Lucy always precedes by saying she's written about the subject in more depth elsewhere. Of her grim childhood home, she comments, "I have written about some of the things that happened in that house, and I don't care really to write any more about it. But we were really terribly poor. So I will just say this: When I was seventeen years old I won a full scholarship to that college right outside of Chicago [where she met William, her science instructor] ... [and] my life changed. Oh, it changed!"

About those Ohs : It's amazing how much meaning and character can be packed into two letters that add up to an exhalation and an exclamation. The long-divorced couple's trip through Maine provides rich fodder for Lucy's head-shaking titular sighs, which convey a mixture of exasperation and fond affection for her ex-husband's foibles — from his too-short khakis to his misguided hope that by visiting a forsaken small town he'll be able to garner some goodwill from a woman who was once crowned its Miss Potato Blossom Queen.

Strout convincingly captures the fluctuating feelings that even the people closest to us can provoke, and the not-always amiable exes' recognition that "all that crap" in their past is "part of the fabric of who we are." At one point, Lucy declares about William, "At times in our marriage I loathed him. I saw, with a kind of dull disc of dread in my chest, that with his pleasant distance, his mild expressions, he was unavailable." Yet not long after, she avers that for the longest time, even after they had both moved on to other spouses, he was the one person who made her feel safe.

Being privy to the innermost thoughts of Lucy Barton — and, more to the point, deep inside a book by Strout — makes readers feel safe. We know we're in good hands.

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OH WILLIAM!

by Elizabeth Strout ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 19, 2021

Another skillful, pensive exploration of Strout’s fundamental credo: “We are all mysteries.”

Pulitzer Prize winner Strout offers a third book linked to writer Lucy Barton, this time reflecting on her complex relationship with her first husband, before and after their divorce.

While Anything Is Possible (2017) told the stories of people among whom Lucy grew up in poverty in Amgash, Illinois, this new novel returns to the direct address of My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016). Lucy’s beloved second husband, David, has recently died, and “in my grief for him I have felt grief for William as well,” she tells us. Her stuttering, stop-and-start narrative drops this and other pronouncements and then moves on, circling back later to elucidate and elaborate. After the pain of their separation subsided, Lucy and William became friends, close enough so that when he begins having night terrors at age 69, he confides in Lucy rather than his much younger third wife. (Wife No. 2 was among the many infidelities that broke up his marriage to Lucy.) Perhaps it’s because the terrors are related to his mother, Catherine, who “seemed central to our marriage,” Lucy tells us. “We loved her. Oh, we loved her.” Well, sometimes; Lucy’s memories reveal a deep ambivalence. Catherine patronized her, referring frequently to the poverty of Lucy’s background and her unfamiliarity with the ways of more affluent people. So it’s a shock to Lucy as well as William when he learns that his mother was married before, abandoned a baby daughter to marry his father, and came from a family even poorer than Lucy’s. Their road trip to Maine prompts William’s habitual coping mechanism of simply checking out, being present but not really there, which is the real reason Lucy left him. Strout’s habitual themes of loneliness and the impossibility of ever truly knowing another person are ubiquitous in this deeply sad tale, which takes its title from Lucy’s head-shaking acknowledgment that her ex will never change, cannot change the remoteness at the core of his personality.

Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-8129-8943-4

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: July 9, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION

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by Elizabeth Strout

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PERSPECTIVES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.

When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781250178633

Page Count: 480

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023

FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

More by Kristin Hannah

by Kristin Hannah

BOOK TO SCREEN

SEEN & HEARD

THE NIGHTINGALE

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 3, 2015

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.

In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring  passeurs : people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the  Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.

Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3

Page Count: 448

Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014

HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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Culture | Books

Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout review: so good you often forget it’s fiction

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Lucy Barton , Elizabeth Strout’s writer protagonist who hits the big time after a humble start in life, has known William for most of her adult life. They were married for 20 years, had two children, he had affairs and they both remarried. But despite all of that, she does not feel she entirely knows him – and she is still sufficiently interested to want to find out. So when he chooses her to confide in about his night terrors, using his old nickname for her, Button, she is flattered. Lucy is grieving for her second husband and William provides a welcome focus. He is an ex who she very much still has feelings for, although they are not straightforward.

This is a return for Lucy, who first appeared in Strout ’s 2016 Man Booker longlisted book which was adapted for the theatre with Laura Linney as Barton (Strout thanks Linney in the acknowledgements, saying she “unwittingly and miraculously gave bloom to this entire book”) . It also picks up on Barton’s 2017 book Anything is Possible, about characters from Lucy’s past, in her hometown of Amgash, Illinois . In My Name is Lucy Barton, William is a distant presence; she thought he was a hero saving her from her poverty stricken and difficult childhood, but the truth is somewhat different, although she makes excuses for his behaviour. Notably, he doesn’t visit her in hospital when she has to spend a month there.

Strout likes to revisit characters. Her 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Olive Kitteridge has an equally compelling sequel, Olive, Again. Lucy, now in her early sixties, is a more poised character than the enjoyably crotchety Kitteridge (played by Frances McDormand in an excellent HBO adaptation). She acknowledges her own feelings, often with heart-breaking descriptions (she says that grief is solitary, “like sliding down the outside of a really long glass building while nobody sees you”) but moves briskly on to speak about others.

Now it is William’s turn and he is an interesting character, a scientist who is nicknamed Einstein because of his heavy moustache, who women seem to flock to regardless of his age (71). He is plagued by thoughts of his German father, who to William’s shame belonged to the Hitler Youth, and also of a mystery he has uncovered about his dead mother Catherine. She was beautiful and well-dressed but a domineering figure – as shown by the way she bought certain clothes for Lucy and also golf clubs to encourage that hobby. Through writing about her relationship with Catherine, Lucy also writes about herself, when she was young, alienated and desperate to be part of another family through William.

Class is a theme. Lucy is from “terribly bleak poverty”, which will always stay with her, while William feels more confident because of his prosperous background.

Strout is such a brilliant writer that you don’t have to have read My Name is Lucy Barton or Anything is Possible to enjoy Oh William! and she fills in the plot so you don’t feel lost (although you may want to go back and check them out afterwards). There are shades of Anne Tyler and also John Updike in the stories woven from the impulses and lives of people in America.

But what sets Strout apart is the way she describes people’s innermost thoughts and the nuances of their feelings. She is an intimate writer with a particular skill for writing about the thoughts that people often brush away or bury, and the result is that you often forget you are reading fiction. You feel like Lucy’s confidante.

Strout recognises that feelings, particularly in relationships, are never black and white. Lucy can both hate William and care for him at the same time. Her repeated use of the word “oh” as in the title, conveys a whole range of feelings, from disappointment to confusion and love.

Lucy isn’t an entirely reliable narrator. She is a writer and this appears in part to be because she likes talking about others rather than herself. Often, things are hinted at in short, one sentence paragraphs and then she absorbs herself in something else with a stream of consciousness about William, fixating on things like how short his khaki trousers are and how that makes her sad or how he has less authority without his moustache, rather than think about their relationship or her feelings. But she knows what she is doing and although she wavers, there is an unshowy wisdom to this book. Strout wants you to think about relationships – the book is dedicated “to anyone that needs it”.

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For dedicated Lucy Barton fans, it is satisfying to have another piece of the tapestry; to understand Lucy and William more deeply. Strout layers on different plots but you see the parallels between Catherine’s story and Lucy’s – both women who thought men would solve their problems and lead them to better lives and were not entirely satisfied.

William and Lucy’s relationship is touching and he shows her in a new light - annoying but also as a person who brings joy to life. At one point, he says this joy is what attracted him to her and it is this spirit that shines through in this warm and enjoyable segment of Lucy’s life, written by one of our best storytellers.

Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout (Hamish Hamilton, £14.99)

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Review: How Elizabeth Strout’s simplicity runs rings around more pyrotechnic novelists

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On the Shelf

Oh William!

By Elizabeth Strout Random House: 256 pages, $27 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org , whose fees support independent bookstores.

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. There is a quietude to her prose — even with scowly, persnickety characters like Olive Kitteridge — that exudes calm devotion. Even in her novels’ darkest moments, there’s a soft, periwinkle feeling.

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. Her exclamation points (there are many) are the little stabs of intensity our emotions cycle through each day. Strout doesn’t dress language up in a tuxedo when a wool sweater will suffice. Other novelists must berate themselves when they see what Strout pulls off without any tacky pyrotechnics. Straightforward goes down so easy and feels so refreshing.

All of which makes reading “Oh William!” like coming home to a sensibility that is so smartly deployed it might go unnoticed. 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. (This may be the only novel about a novelist that does not remotely concern itself with her writing, publishing or craft.)

But we shouldn’t call this a trilogy. “Anything Is Possible” was no sequel, but a series of stories building a larger universe for the first novel. “Oh William!,” in turn, is more like the next row of stitches in a knitted blanket; new patterns arise, but the overall effect is of a world filling in, growing at once larger and more intricate. “Trilogy” implies momentum, but Strout keeps looping back to find more, more, more in the recesses.

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This novel is set a few years after the events recounted in “My Name Is Lucy Barton.” (To add a layer of slight complication, that story was set in the mid-1980s but narrated some 20 years later.) Lucy’s second husband, David, has died, and she finds herself drawn to the familiarity of her first husband, William — his capable scientific mind, his confidence in moving through the world — though he is now married for a third time.

Strout’s plain style voids the soap-operatic potential of this description. Lucy’s grief surges and recedes, but her attention is fixed on Willliam’s difficulties: Shortly after his wife, Estelle, unexpectedly departs their marriage, he discovers that his mother had abandoned a child before he was born. “Wait,” Lucy asks when he calls her to come see his suddenly half-empty apartment, “She took the rugs?” Williams nods. “God. My God.” This is a level of treachery that knocks Lucy nearly as much as William.

Loneliness and longing were Strout’s big themes in “Lucy Barton” and its followup. She returns to them here like a supplicant at her prayer book: begging to understand them even just a little bit more. In that first novel, as the writer lies in a hospital bed suffering from a vague internal ailment, her mother comes to stay for five days. She tells stories about the townspeople of Amgash, Ill., who had mostly scorned and belittled the poor, isolated Barton family. (We learn more about their alienation, from their neighbors and each other, in “Anything Is Possible.”) The subtext is everything Lucy and her mother don’t say to each other: about their shivering poverty; Lucy’s father’s ugly, masturbatory outbursts; the dim looks where warm hugs ought to have been. Love — a word hardly uttered — covers them like a clear glaze, enveloping but nearly invisible.

The Lucy of “Oh William!” has not evolved beyond her lonely childhood — most of us don’t. On a trip to Maine to help William find his long-lost half-sister, she looks out the window and takes in the wide-open road, the scrub of trees. She senses the pall of a familiar emptiness — and panics. “Oh I wish I had not come!” she thinks. “I am afraid of things that are not familiar.” William’s response is “cold to [her] ears” and she tailspins further. “Oh, to panic! If you have not been there, you cannot know.”

Their marriage-cum-friendship is marked by ambivalence, mutability. “At times in our marriage I loathed him,” Lucy remarks . “I saw, with a kind of dull disc of dread in my chest, that with his pleasant distance, his mild expressions, he was unavailable.” But now they talk often, meet at a local diner for breakfasts, confide. Lucy calls William first when her second husband dies: “Oh William, help me.”

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There is a built-in tether binding some relationships, Strout suggests, like the “invisible threads” Virginia Woolf spun out across London to keep her characters connected in “Mrs. Dalloway.” The best moments in the novel are the sudden knocks Lucy feels when her thread to William twangs — that yank of disassociation we feel when we realize that to be human is to be alone.

Strout does very little here that is new, and that is a notion to celebrate. I hate writing that she tells “small” stories, because criticism of fiction by women is filled with such dismissive implications: It’s lovely of women to write these dainty little tales of domesticity and woe — pat pat pat on the head. But smallness is Strout’s strength. Her stories don’t need to be grand because human experience is largely not; it is lived on the level of the daily, the conversational, the gestural. There is wonder enough in the silence between two people to fill books even longer than these.

Which isn’t to say Strout doesn’t have a cosmic point of view. Her novels are universal, though they aren’t big or broad or grasping, like the surfeit of literary fiction that needs to announce its own importance via page count or character sprawl. Read “Oh William!” for its suggestions about how the economics of our childhood never leave us. (In the first novel, Lucy is blown away by an artist who can afford shirts from Bloomingdale’s; in this novel she lunches there regularly but never forgets her earlier self.) Read it for Strout’s careful revelations of the sandblasting of rural America after World War II.

Oh! And read it for the copious exclamation points. They’re the only ones in modern fiction I can stand.

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Kelly’s work has been published in New York magazine, Vogue, the New York Times Book Review and elsewhere.

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Book review: Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout is a delightful and emotionally honest read

Oh William!

By Elizabeth Strout

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Lachlan's Book Reviews

Book Review: “Oh William !” by Elizabeth Strout

Publication date october 2021.

Elizabeth Strout is one of my favourite authors. Over the last few years I have been able to read three of her books ahead of publication due to her publisher making them available for review via NetGalley. I am most grateful for this opportunity. I will post reviews of two relatively recent books (“Oh William !” and “Lucy by the Sea” ) ahead of her most recent book (“Tell Me Everything”) which is due for publication in September 2024.

Many of her books are based in small towns in the US North-East with occasional scenes in bigger cities, notably New York City. Oftentimes characters and their lives and towns are already well-known from earlier books. It is a delight to revisit these communities and the people who inhabit them as their relationships and lives change over the years. I will publish the reviews in order of publication beginning with “Oh William !”

I am grateful to NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

“Oh William !” by Elizabeth Strout, takes place in recent times, mostly in New York City and the North-East of the USA . The protagonist, Lucy, will be familiar to those who have read an earlier book by the author, “Lucy Barton”. Several characters, incidents and locations are revisited in this new book. The book is written from Lucy’s viewpoint. It is largely, although not entirely about her relationship, later in life, with William, her former husband. They remain close, having lost their new partners through death and divorce. Other characters introduced include Lucy’s daughters, her recently deceased second husband, William’s other wives and notably, his mother. Lucy’s parents, although long passed away, are revisited and reconsidered. Although not essential, “Oh William !” is probably best read after “Lucy Barton’, which takes places before the events in the current book. Certain issues, scenes and behaviours recounted in the earlier book provide some background for Lucy’s perspective and thoughts in this book. The book addresses familiar themes of Elizabeth Strout’s writing; poverty, family, marriage, children and ‘home’ in a wider sense. Much of the book is about reflections on the past. These are sometime triggered by more recent actions, events and situations involving Lucy and William. These reflections sometimes provide a coming to terms with the past and perhaps a better understanding of people; who they are and why they act like they do. I enjoyed this book immensely. The author captures elegantly the richness and texture of people’s lives that comes from their everyday experiences. Be they ordinary or extraordinary events. I found myself pausing to reread particularly poignant but apparently simple phrases. “..whoever really knows the experience of another” for example or “ This is the way of life: the many things we do not know until it is too late.” Simple words but memorable. In term of the plot, it is somewhat secondary to the journey of Lucy and William as they come to terms with the lives they have now. Lucy, in particular , seems to find, if not closure, then some clarity as she recollects people and incidents from the past. There is a road trip, with people, locations and incidents adding to Lucy and William perception of the past and also the present. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and was left wanting more. I think anyone who has enjoyed previous books from this author will feel the same way. The main characters are well developed; incidental characters are also memorable, perhaps destined to take on a larger role in future books. In particular I would like to read more about Lucy’s second husband David, who has a lesser role in this book compared to William. William comes across as a less likeable personality; at least as an ex-husband, late in life. Perhaps this is one of the authors messages when she writes, towards the end of the book, “…we do not know anybody, not even ourselves !”. In closing, this is another wonderful book from Elizabeth Strout. The language, descriptions and characters combine to make it a real pleasure to read. Indeed, readers may be left wanting to know more and looking forward to another book. I certainly hope so. Whether of not these characters are revisited, I look forward to reading more from this author. I wish her, and all involved in bringing this book to publication, all the very best.

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Book summary and reviews of Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout

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Oh William!

Amgash Series #3

by Elizabeth Strout

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Book Summary

Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout 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.

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. What happens next is nothing less than another example of what Hilary Mantel has called Elizabeth Strout's "perfect attunement to the human condition." 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. At the heart of this story is the indomitable voice of Lucy Barton, who offers a profound, lasting reflection on the very nature of existence. "This is the way of life," Lucy says: "the many things we do not know until it is too late." First published in October 2021; paperback reprint April 2022.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

• Why have Lucy and William stayed in each other's lives? Did you find yourself wishing they would get back together? How, if at all, did that feeling change over the course of the book?
• Compare and contrast Lucy's marriages to William and to David. How does she characterize each relationship? How does each man complement her in a different way?
• What does Lucy learn about herself through her relationship with William? What have you learned about yourself through your relationships with others?
• Discuss Lucy's relationship with her mother-in-law, Catherine. What does the story about Catherine getting rid of the coat Lucy loved say about their relationship? Did your opinion of Catherine change as you learned more about her past? If ...

You can see the full discussion here . This discussion will contain spoilers! Some of the recent comments posted about Oh William!: Discuss Lucy's thoughts on having a home without William and her view that to deny her husband the chance of comforting her was "an unspeakably awful thing." In a marriage or other close relationship sometimes one person is suffering. If the other person can comfort the sufferer it benefits both persons. But not allowing the other to comfort can create a big distance between the two. A few days before ... - Charli Fulton Do you agree with Lucy's views on class in America? Where do you see the themes of class and money appearing in the book? I agree with Lucy's feelings on class in America. She knows from her experiences growing up that without the help of a great school counselor she would probably be like her siblings. She was able to physically move on but in her heart and mind... - reene How did you feel about Lucy and William by the end of the book? I honestly found them rather self-involved. It is a rare privilege that most people do not share to have the mental energy to spend so much time chewing on old traumas. I realize they were both deeply damaged by their childhoods, especially Lucy, but... - reidob How do we get to know about the characters who populate this book? Believe it or not, I have not read any of Stout's other books but I understood the characters clearly. Lucy is very descriptive in her details of herself and other characters of the stories. I disagree that other books need to be read before ... - xandrabk How do you think Lucy and William were influenced by their parents' trauma? How were their daughters influenced by their parents' trauma? Is there a way to stop this cycle? I think Lucy, initially, was affected by her trauma such that she did not feel self value. William's parenting caused him to be a bit selfish and set in his ways. He became disappointed in his mother after finding out that he was not the only ... - xandrabk

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Reader reviews.

"Loneliness and betrayal, themes to which the Pulitzer Prize–winning Strout has returned throughout her career, are ever present in this illuminating character-driven saga... It's not for nothing that Strout has been compared to Hemingway. In some ways, she betters him." - Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Strout's habitual themes of loneliness and the impossibility of ever truly knowing another person are ubiquitous in this deeply sad tale, which takes its title from Lucy's head-shaking acknowledgment that her ex will never change, cannot change the remoteness at the core of his personality. Another skillful, pensive exploration of Strout's fundamental credo: 'We are all mysteries.'" - Kirkus Reviews "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

Author Information

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Elizabeth Strout Author Biography

Elizabeth Strout was born in Portland, Maine, and grew up in small towns in Maine and New Hampshire. From a young age she was drawn to writing things down, keeping notebooks that recorded the quotidian details of her days. She was also drawn to books, and spent hours of her youth in the local library lingering among the stacks of fiction. During the summer months of her childhood she played outdoors, either with her brother, or, more often, alone, and this is where she developed her deep and abiding love of the physical world: the seaweed covered rocks along the coast of Maine, and the woods of New Hampshire with its hidden wildflowers. During her adolescent years, Strout continued writing avidly, having conceived of herself as a writer from early on. She read biographies of writers, ...

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Book Review: Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout

Posted October 15, 2021 by WendyW in Book Review , New Release / 6 Comments

Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout 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. "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. What happens next is nothing less than another example of what Hilary Mantel has called Elizabeth Strout's "perfect attunement to the human condition." 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.

At the heart of this story is the indomitable voice of Lucy Barton, who offers a profound, lasting reflection on the very nature of existence. "This is the way of life," Lucy says: "the many things we do not know until it is too late."

Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout is the third book in Elizabeth’s Strout’s Amgash Series but can be read as a stand-alone, however, it’s really best to read the series in order. The book is written all in first person POV by Lucy is an author and the book is like a conversation with Lucy about her life, and especially about her ex-husband William.

Lucy Barton tells us all about her ex-husband, William. Although no longer married, Lucy and William still have a relationship, not only do they share their two adult daughters, but they share past experiences and a history together. Oh William, is all about Lucy, telling us about her marriage to William and how they both have navigated love, loss, divorce, and love again.

At first, the writing style is a bit jarring, but after a while, I felt like I was having a conversation with Lucy. Her insights into herself and her family are intimate and thoughtful and I enjoyed this easy conversation we had while reading the book. At first, Lucy seems kind of ordinary, but as you read through the book, you realize what an extraordinary woman she is.

The story was more than just flashbacks and memories, Lucy and William work together and find out some family secrets, and learn more about each other’s background and they grow stronger as they work together.

I recommend this book to anyone who loves to read about families and relationships. I received a complimentary copy of this book. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Share this:

6 responses to “ book review: oh william by elizabeth strout ”.

This sounds like an interesting book. I’m glad you can still enjoy it as a stand-alone even though its part of a series. Great review!

How much repetition did you notice in this book?

I like it when stories are set in a series but can technically be read out of order if you discover a later book in them that appeals to you.

Although I always read books in chronological order unless I genuinely didn’t know they were a later instalment of a series.

Which means that I get a little discombobulated with series like the Chronicles of Narnia that are written in non-chronological order. It was surprise to get later in that series and suddenly be flung back into the characters’ pasts. LOL! Although I totally understood why C.S. Lewis did that and soon adjusted quite well.

Anyway, good review. 🙂 If more books come out in this series, will you read them?

Yes, there was a fair amount of repetition in this book, but it’s part of the authors writing style as it’s a stream of consciousness narration. I think I would read another book in this series, but I’d go back and read the first two books first.

This look good. Thanks for the advice about reading them in order.

Thank you Kimberly.

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Book review: Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout

Elizabeth Strout has a novelist’s most desirable quality: a distinct voice. Hers is quiet, conversational, intimate. It allows her to move easily between now and then.

Her narrator, Lucy, is herself a novelist, sufficiently successful for the public library staff in a small town in Maine to recognise her and bring out copies of all her novels for her to sign when she makes an unheralded visit.

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This is Strout’s third Lucy Barton novel, and I would guess, and hope, there will be more to come.

Lucy’s second, and adored, husband has recently died. William was her first one, she his second wife; in the course of this novel his third one will leave him. Lucy and he are still, or again, good friends. They have two grown-up much loved daughters. There’s a lot of family love in this novel, as well as mysteries and difficult childhoods, for Lucy was brought up poor at a wretched farm in Illinois, and there was little love in her upbringing.

William is an academic, a chemist, now retired from teaching but still with his own laboratory. Though married again, it is to Lucy that he turns when he starts experiencing night terrors. His mother features in these.

Catherine was a strong-minded and beautiful woman who had left her first husband for William’s father, a German prisoner of war, working in the potato fields of Maine.

William knows little of Catherine’s origins – he will find out more on a trip to Maine taking with him Lucy after he learns that he may have a half-sister living there.

Rural Maine is harshly described, a place where the American dream seems to have died.

Lucy, when first married to William, was rather daunted by Catherine, a stylish, self-assured lady who played golf at the country club, but failed to persuade Lucy to take up the game. Catherine is now dead. Her story and her influence are at the heart of the novel.

Americans long pretended that there was no class system in the USA. The pretence, or wilful ignorance, was natural, for the founding document of the Great Republic declares that all were born equal. But it is of course nonsense and, unusually, class is central to this novel.

Lucy has come to love New York; it represents her escape from poverty and the low aspirations in which it holds its victims. She treasures her escape, yet feels guilty. She remembers times early in her marriage to William when they were living in Greenwich Village and she felt terrible when she thought about her parents “and the feeling that I had left them behind – as I had.” The shadow of a mother who loved her but never hugged her, and resented her escape from the miserable farm, still lies over her.

Lucy and William have formed a friendship that has survived their divorce. She never loved him as deeply as she loved her second husband, David, and with him life was more complete than it had been with William.

Yet now, it is clear that Lucy and William matter more to each other than they did when they were husband and wife. Strout unravels the mysteries of relationships deftly. Perhaps these mysteries are never – can never – be fully resolved; but they can be lived with and that is a step towards understanding and acceptance.

This is a novel that searches for the truth of these things. It is written with the lightest of hands as we follow Lucy’s flickering thoughts. There are many fine scenes, notably Lucy’s meeting with the discovered half-sister in her cherished home, a half-sister who speaks of a Catherine different from the woman Lucy knew.

Talking with her daughters, Lucy reflects that “it was strange to think of their grandmother having this life that they knew nothing about, that neither I nor William had known anything about.” But this, of course, is how it is in families.

This is a delightful novel. It rattles along so easily and agreeably in Lucy’s voice that it is only gradually that you realise how intelligently it examines the lives of its characters. The easy reading it offers is evidence of Strout’s technical mastery.

Oh William!, by Elizabeth Strout, Penguin, 256pp, £14.99

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Oh William!: A Novel Kindle Edition

• Book 3 of 5 Amgash
• Print length 240 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher Random House
• Publication date October 19, 2021
• File size 1136 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
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About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., product details.

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08PYR4X94
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House (October 19, 2021)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 19, 2021
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 1136 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
• #90 in Literary Sagas
• #660 in Saga Fiction
• #1,002 in Family Saga Fiction

About the author

Elizabeth strout.

Elizabeth Strout is the author of the New York Times bestseller Olive Kitteridge, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize; the national bestseller Abide with Me; and Amy and Isabelle, winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in London. She lives in Maine and New York City.

Customer reviews

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Customers say

Customers find the book insightful, truthful, and addictive. They also say it resonates with regular relationships and is truthful to a fault. However, some find the entertainment value boring. Opinions are mixed on the writing style, with some finding it almost conversational, while others say it's too casual and annoying. Readers also have mixed opinions about the storyline, with others finding it absorbing and realistic, while still others find it dull and annoying in the beginning. Customers also have different opinions on the characters, with one finding them beautifully explored and multilayered, while another finds them unenviable and unlikable. Customers disagree on the understandability, with those finding it simple and moving, while other find it tedious.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the book insightful, engrossing, and magical. They also say it provides a perceptive view into human relationships and loneliness. Customers also say the book is honest and open.

"...guarded with others and not wholly trusted by readers, Lucy is open, honest , and thoroughly likeable. As William says to her, “You are a spirit...." Read more

"...I hope other readers find this book to be enlightening ." Read more

"...Simply elegant, whilst being honest and open. A mature and introspective look at the world ... and the world of relationships...." Read more

"...with beautifully explored characters that are multilayered and genuine . The simple, conversational language is perfectly pitched...." Read more

Customers are mixed about the writing style. Some mention the style is almost conversational, and can be read at a leisurely pace. They also appreciate the no excessive use of adjectives and adverbs. However, others say the writing is too studiedly casual and irritating.

"...Ms. Strout writes clearly in Lucy's voice , articulating Lucy's thoughts though I was sometimes annoyed by repetitive phrases...." Read more

"...The book is written in a very interesting conversational style that truly exposes the human psyche in a flawed and real way...." Read more

"...book of the four where Lucy is barely included, and for me, it didn’t have enough beauty , grace, warmth or connection to make up for the swampy..." Read more

"Elizabeth Strout's novel reads and feels like a conversation . Lucy Barton talks to us about her first husband, William...." Read more

Customers are mixed about the storyline. Some find it absorbing, emotional, and thought provoking, while others say it's dull, annoying, and lacks climax.

"...The plot is simple - a recently-widowed woman tries to help her first husband through some changes that are emotional for him...." Read more

"...like myself who have been divorced, I found this newest creation very heart-warming and true to the character of wonderful Lucy Barton...." Read more

"...The ending was a total non-event ...." Read more

"...But Elizabeth Stout provides enough background story to make this novel stand alone beautifully...." Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the characters in the book. Some find them beautifully explored and multilayered, while others find them unenviable and dull.

"...The plot, characters and relationships are fresh and not cliche in the least.But…THE NOT SO GOOD..." Read more

"...I found the characters confounding , because they're so thinly presented. William seems to use Lucy but not to love her. He seems selfish...." Read more

"...divorced, I found this newest creation very heart-warming and true to the character of wonderful Lucy Barton...." Read more

"The book is a stunning achievement with beautifully explored characters that are multilayered and genuine...." Read more

Customers are mixed about the understandability of the book. Some mention that it's simple and moving, while others say that it is tedious and dimensional.

"...From the book’s title to its final page, Strout deftly deploys deceptively simple language to bring readers another rich chapter in the life of the..." Read more

"This rambling monologue of a book was a slog to read . All about nothing. An episode of Seinfeld...." Read more

"...And most of all, distinctive. Effortlessly , though I know that effortless seeming writing is the most difficult, Strout carries us on this journey..." Read more

"...I found it hard to finish and keep interest . I’m shocked NPR voted this as a great read." Read more

Customers are mixed about the tone. Some find the book joyful, poignant, suspenseful, and human. Others say it's skillfully written, but not much emotional recognition, sad, andapologetic.

"...She writes well, but the apologetic stream of consciousness ,..." Read more

"Read the one before this one too. Enjoy her soft wisdom and humanness . Going to read Olive Kitterige for the second time." Read more

"...This could be fine. What is not fine, is that Lucy has no esprit/soul /core… None of these are the right words, but there it is." Read more

"...I should have , and will. What struck me is that Lucy is a joyful person , unlike other Strout female characters...." Read more

Customers find the book boring and weak. They also say it's the author's weakest effort.

"...This one, though, disappointed me . At about 80% through it, I wondered if I would finish, I did not like Lucy nor care what happened to her...." Read more

"...Oh William, however, was just plain boring and never got interesting...." Read more

"...a lot of extra space. It just didn't keep me that interested ." Read more

"...characters felt two dimensional and therefore neither knowable, nor compelling ...." Read more

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Oh, William

46 pages • 1 hour read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Before You Read

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Pages 87-167

Pages 168-237

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Further Reading & Resources

Discussion Questions

Summary and Study Guide

Oh William! (2021) by Elizabeth Strout is the sequel to the Man Booker longlisted and New York Times bestselling novel My Name is Lucy Barton (2016). Strout is also the author of six other books, including the Pulitzer-prize winning Olive Kitteridge (2008).

Oh William! features the previous novel’s first-person protagonist Lucy Barton at a later stage in life when she is 63, a successful writer, and widowed from her second marriage.

While the first novel’s topic was chiefly selfhood, William! centers on the emotional dynamics of marriage and divorce and the effects of history and geography on personal identity.

This study guide references the Viking Print Edition of the novel published in 2021.

Please be advised, this novel includes references to an eating disorder and self-harm.

Plot Summary

In the wake of being widowed from her second marriage to David Abramson, Lucy Barton, a successful 63-year-old writer and mother of two grown-up daughters, is summoned to the aid of her ex-husband William Gerhardt. William, a physically fit 71-year-old parasitology researcher, is beset with problems. One problem is that his third wife Estelle has left him, taking their 10-year-old daughter and much of his furniture. Bewildered, William turns his attention to his other problem: the discovery that his mother, Catherine Cole , had a daughter from her first marriage to a potato-farmer in Maine. Catherine left her first husband to marry William’s father, Wilhelm Gerhardt , a prisoner of war who fought on the German side during WWII.

William invites Lucy on a trip to Maine to meet his lost half-sister, Lois Bubar . Lucy agrees to go because she still cares for William and welcomes the distraction from her grief over David. When they arrive in Maine, William puts off meeting Lois and he and Lucy drive around the desolate landscape where Lois grew up and raised her family. They go to the local library at Houlton where the librarian shows them pictures of William’s father Wilhelm during his POW years. Lucy, who grew up in a tiny house in the middle of an Illinois soybean field, panics at the empty Maine landscape, which reminds her of the isolation of her unhappy and impoverished childhood. Even though she is a successful writer who has lived in New York most of her adult life, the return to a rural setting inspires the same feelings of invisibility and worthlessness that predominated during her years of deprivation. Lucy realizes that while her education and association with William’s family gave her middle-class privileges, her inability to stay in touch with her family of origin caused another form of isolation and depression. She recalls Catherine’s continual insistence that Lucy came from nothing, and that Catherine called her a piece of “trash” on her deathbed. Still, Lucy realizes that William has his own issues with his mother, who he felt rejected him. This has caused him to feel rejected by women, even as he has continually sought their comfort in his three marriages and extramarital affairs.

William is too timid to meet Lois, so he asks Lucy to go in advance. Lucy finds that Lois is both proud and resilient; however, her hurt over Catherine’s abandonment manifests in resentment and the cold treatment she gave Catherine when she sought Lois out. Lois, a close reader of Lucy’s books, was also hurt at being left out of Lucy’s memoir and at the fact that William did not know of her existence until going on an ancestry website. Lois refuses to meet William.

Feeling the sting of Lois’s rejection, William disappears for a few weeks when they return to New York, distracting himself with an unsuitable woman. Meanwhile, Lucy confronts the loss of David and the terrifying childhood feelings the Maine trip brought up. When William asks Lucy to accompany him on a trip to the Cayman Islands, she is bemused. She realizes that William does not have the aura of authority and protection that he once held for her. However, she agrees to accompany him anyway out of compassion.

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A Novel Traces the Many Lives of a 19th-Century Romantic

William Boyd’s new book follows one man from childhood to death, and the globe-spanning adventures in between.

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THE ROMANTIC , by William Boyd

The Romantics took their time coming. For 10 centuries in the West there was only God, and all art — the beautifully illuminated breviaries, the vast cathedrals — was about him. Then, at last, around 1300 (in Dante, above all), the human face reappeared in the arts, the human as more than servant of king and Christ. What came next seems inevitable only in retrospect: first, the incandescent, revitalizing humanism of the Renaissance, followed by the arguably still more radical scientific and rational advances of the Enlightenment.

This was when the Romantics arrived. They represented a final moral rebellion against the monolithic medieval power of church and state — what actually mattered, they believed, was the individual spirit those institutions had subsumed for so long, the individual’s autonomy and passion, the authenticity of subjective emotions. As Goethe, perhaps the greatest artist the movement produced, famously wrote: “Feeling is all.”

Cashel Greville Ross, the protagonist of William Boyd’s new novel, “The Romantic,” is one of their number (as the title helpfully indicates). He’s another of Boyd’s marvelous “whole life” creations , a fictional character traced from birth to death: Born in 1799, he becomes, in these packed pages, a soldier, a writer, a jailbird, a farmer, an explorer in Africa, a pallbearer for Percy Bysshe Shelley, a friend to Byron, a diplomat in Italy and more, restlessly traversing the globe in search of a lasting identity.

Boyd spins these adventures into an absorbing tale. Of course, as the study of history has advanced beyond the simplicity of grand narratives, it’s become clear that Romanticism was a set of ideals available mostly to rich, white men: an assertion of total individual freedom based precisely on the lack of freedom of huge parts of society. Boyd, born in Africa to Scottish parents, educated (alongside King Charles) at Gordonstoun, and in more recent times the owner of a tony vineyard in France, seems indifferent to that conundrum in this story. For a reader willing to accept that lack of nuance, though, “The Romantic” is a panoramic, transporting yarn.

Cashel Greville (the Ross is added later, after some questions of bastardy are resolved) grows up in County Cork, Ireland. He is raised by his aunt, a governess who tutors him as well as the twin girls on the large estate where she works, and armed with this education Cashel proves clever, handsome and game. At just 15 he fibs his way into the army, and soon sees action at the Battle of Waterloo. For the remainder of his life this becomes his golden ticket: “The great revelation — Waterloo,” Boyd writes when Cashel starts meeting the Romantic poets in Italy. “Even Mr. Shelley stared at him respectfully with his big restless eyes.”

At this stage Cashel is writing a travelogue, which will eventually earn him a minor but significant reputation as a writer. When his publisher vanishes without paying him, though, he’s sent to Marshalsea debtors’ prison, the appalling place that Dickens wrote about so forcefully and eloquently. (Here and throughout the book, Boyd is superb at integrating period detail, excellent on the historical novelist’s thorny tasks of money, hygiene and travel — a pro’s pro.)

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Review: William Kent Krueger and Mindy Mejia’s new mysteries hunt murderers in Minnesota and Iowa

Local fiction: stellar entries in two bestselling series have more in common than meets the eye..

By Carole E. Barrowman

Special to the Star Tribune

On first glance it might seem that Minnesota authors William Kent Krueger and Mindy Mejia’s latest novels have little in common.

Krueger’s “Spirit Crossing” is a stellar example of eco-literature, where place transcends plot to explore social and environmental themes. On the other hand, Mejia’s “A World of Hurt” is muscular Midwest noir: cynical, violent, existential. But take a second glance. Both novels have complex characters struggling with tough emotional dilemmas, both tell really good stories and, if you ask me, this makes both the best of the best.

“Spirit Crossing” is the 20th book (hip! hip!) in Krueger’s beloved Cork O’Connor series. Cork’s mantra has always been that “if you pull one thread” in an investigation, “it sometimes loosens others.”

The first thread unravels on its own. While searching for a good blueberry patch, Cork’s grandson, Waaboo, has a vision. Like others in his Ojibwe family, Waaboo can see spirits. His vision leads to a buried body beneath the berries. Working together, Cork and his son-in-law, Daniel, tug some more. Eventually, their investigation untangles the knotted strands of a missing white girl and a missing Ojibwe girl, and the terrible reality that missing white girls get the headlines more than the hundreds of missing indigenous ones.

The place of the title, Spirit Crossing, is “contested land,” the site where the Iron Lake Ojibwe have been fighting to secure their “rightful dominion” for decades. Now, it’s a place of protest as they fight to prevent an oil pipeline from destroying the land.

Spirit Crossing also is the “path of souls,” where spirits move toward the divine. But, for me — despite the presence of Henry Meloux, an Ojibwe Mide healer and the family’s spiritual adviser — Annie, Cork’s queer daughter, is the emotional heart of this novel. Annie has returned to Gooseberry Lane to celebrate her brother Stephen’s marriage, carrying baggage that threads beautifully through the story.

Mejia’s latest thriller , “ A World of Hurt” sees alienated Iowa police detective Max Summerlin and DEA informant and ex-drug-trafficker Kara Johnson elbow deep in it. Again. This novel opens a year after the events in Mejia’s addictive “To Catch A Storm,” where they brought down a massive drug cartel operating throughout the Midwest. This time, it’s way personal. Celina, Kara’s girlfriend, her “air,” her “reason,” was killed in the bust. Kara’s out to protect her lover’s legacy.

Kara has unsuccessfully tried to “fill the empty spaces” after Celina’s death “with drinking, with drawing, with vengeance.” Not working. With promises of a clean(ish) slate if she becomes the “bait to trap the enforcer” taking out loose ends from the drug bust, Kara lets the chaos back into her life.

Set mostly in northeastern Iowa, the novel jumps between Kara’s point of view and Max’s. I was all in for Kara’s. She’s one of the most intriguing, broken, bad-ass characters I’ve read recently.

She drives the novel’s crazy-intense plot with her questionable choices and queer-focused, feminist point of view: She calls out the male gaze when she sees it. She scoffs at men “spouting credentials like they were whipping them out to measure.” She doesn’t know “where the boundary is between healthy and hurt, between living and dying.”

That’s another thing the books have in common. Cork O’Connor may be “bent by the weight of too many years filled with too many worries,” and Kara Johnson may be “long past [her] expiration date,” but I hope both will be back.

Carole E. Barrowman is a writer and teacher.

Spirit Crossing

By: William Kent Krueger.

Publisher: Atria, 335 pages, $28.99.

A World of Hurt

By: Mindy Mejia.

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press, 337 pages, $27.

Carole E. Barrowman

More from books, a playwright claims her new play is not about her dad in ‘the hypocrite.’ it very much is..

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Journalist Hunter Davies chooses his favourite books

From An Inland Voyage to Just William, the British journalist and author picks his best reads

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The journalist, author and broadcaster picks his favourites. His latest book, "Letters to Margaret: Confessions to my Late Wife" , was published earlier this month.

Just William

Richmal Crompton, 1922

I never laughed as much in my life at any books. Then or now. Strange that I loved them so much – for William's life was so different from mine. He was living in the posh suburbs somewhere in the south, and I was in a council house in Carlisle. Yet his anti-adult stance, his japes and scrapes and his awful spelling had me in hysterics.

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An Inland Voyage

Robert Louis Stevenson, 1878

His first book, about a canoe trip with a friend on the Belgium-France borders. Potty really, it was a just an excuse for an adventure. Nothing much happens, but it's ever so charming. Robert Louis Stevenson is the writer I would most liked to have met in the flesh – always ill, but always on the move.

The Northern Fells

Alfred Wainwright, 1962

One of seven books in his "Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells". He produced them his way – with his drawings, his hand-writing. They are works of art as well as being vital for any Lakeland lover.

My Name is not Matilda: Miranda's Memoirs

Miranda Amapola Symington, 2024

I encouraged her to write and publish this book, her first at the age of 77. I was just so amazed by her life story – working as a model in Chelsea in the 1960s, crossing the Atlantic in a home-made trimaran with her husband in the 1970s. But mostly because she is such a talented, touching, revealing writer.

Daisy Belle: Swimming Champion of the World

Caitlin Davies, 2018

OK, she is my daughter but it is such an excellent idea: the fictionalised life of a real 19th century working-class woman who was a diver and swimmer. These modern Olympic swimmers, eh, they have it easy. Daisy had it hard. Ever so touching.

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We Are the Land

• Peter Booth Wiley Endowment Fund in History
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About the Book

“A Native American rejoinder to Richard White and Jesse Amble White ’s  California Exposures . ”— Kirkus Reviews   Rewriting the history of California as Indigenous. Before there was such a thing as “California,” there were the People and the Land. Manifest Destiny, the Gold Rush, and settler colonial society drew maps, displaced Indigenous People, and reshaped the land, but they did not make California. Rather, the lives and legacies of the people native to the land shaped the creation of California. We Are the Land is the first and most comprehensive text of its kind, centering the long history of California around the lives and legacies of the Indigenous people who shaped it. Beginning with the ethnogenesis of California Indians, We Are the Land recounts the centrality of the Native presence from before European colonization through statehood—paying particularly close attention to the persistence and activism of California Indians in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The book deftly contextualizes the first encounters with Europeans, Spanish missions, Mexican secularization, the devastation of the Gold Rush and statehood, genocide, efforts to reclaim land, and the organization and activism for sovereignty that built today’s casino economy. A text designed to fill the glaring need for an accessible overview of California Indian history, We Are the Land will be a core resource in a variety of classroom settings, as well as for casual readers and policymakers interested in a history that centers the native experience.

About the Author

William J. Bauer, Jr. is an enrolled citizen of the Round Valley Indian Tribes and Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Damon B. Akins is Professor of History at Guilford College, in Greensboro, North Carolina, and a former high school teacher in Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

"A Native American rejoinder to Richard White and Jesse Amble White’s  California Exposures. . . .  [And] a welcome contribution to Native studies and the rich literature of California’s first peoples. "  — Kirkus Reviews

"In what seems an overdue departure from standard histories, Akins and Bauer’s comprehensive account places indigenous people at the heart of California’s story." — Boston Globe

" We Are the Land is an astonishing work of scholarship, storytelling, and solidarity. . . . It will set the standard for the many other stories of the People waiting to be told." — Sierra Magazine

"Combines lyrical storytelling with academic narration to foreground Indigenous oral stories. . . . The book’s well-researched micro-histories coalesce to create a necessary rewriting of Californian history." — Civil Eats

"Akins and Bauer have written a classic. . . . A relocation of the region’s indigenous peoples from a history based on their erasure to a history based on their preeminence." — CounterPunch

"This richly sourced work. . . . is a refreshing read, offering a much-needed perspective of California history." — CHOICE

"This is a history of personal stories. Many make for painful reading. All are to the point." — Geography Realm

“The stories Atkins and Bauer gather in this survey are about the Natives themselves, offering a compassionate reading of a people who have, even in some of the best revisionist studies, remained the 'other' on the periphery. The details and voices of California Indians' lives that the authors amplify from oral histories, primary documents, and secondary sources draw out the drama and recast the history of the 31st state from the perspectives of its First Peoples.” — The Nation

"Damon Akins and William Bauer unveil a fascinating narrative about California Indians that breaks free from conventional boundaries of time and space. . . . Anyone interested in the history of Indigenous peoples will wish to read and enjoy it." — Hispanic American Historical Review

"This well-written, accessible book reconceives California as Indigeneous land…the text itself is a powerful illustration of the ongoing challenges of colonialism and the Indigeneous survival of its many formations." — Pacific Historical Review

"It will be very good to keep this book close at hand and to insist that our students do the same. It is timely, it is a significant accomplishment, and it is welcome." — California History

"We Are the Land  foregrounds Indigeneity in California — a state in which genocidal narratives operate to complete the work of actual genocide in effectively scrubbing any Native American presence from the story of California. The book offers a resounding refusal of this erasure, instead offering a comprehensive history of Native California that encompasses past and present to underscore the continual presence and centrality of Indigenous peoples throughout settler colonization, missionization, statehood, and the present." — Book Riot

"Thankfully, this is not your parents’ book on the history of California." — American Anthropologist

"This book is a welcome contribution to the growing field of California Indian Studies." — Society for US Intellectual History

" We Are the Land is an excellent book. . . . a history of California’s Indigenous people in action, shaping places that, in turn, shape them. They made this history." — American Historical Review

• 15th Annual Heyday Harvest History Award 2021 , Heydey Books
• John C. Ewers Award 2022 2022 , Western History Association