Her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for many years, comes to see her. Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Now, in My Name Is Lucy Barton, this extraordinary writer shows how a simple hospital visit becomes a portal to the most tender relationship of all - the one between mother and daughter. Her bestselling novels, including Olive Kitteridge and The Burgess Boys, have illuminated our most tender relationships. I thought how when I got out of the hospital I would never again walk down the sidewalk without giving thanks for being one of those people, and for many years I did that - I would remember the view from the hospital window and be glad for the sidewalk I was walking on.Ī new book by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout is cause for celebration. It was May, and then June, and I remember how I would stand and look out the window at the sidewalk below and watch the young women - my age - in their spring clothes, out on their lunch breaks I could see their heads moving in conversation, their blouses rippling in the breeze. During the day, the building’s beauty receded, and gradually it became simply one more large structure against a blue sky, and all the city’s buildings seemed remote, silent, far away. This was in New York City, and at night a view of the Chrysler Building, with its geometric brilliance of lights, was directly visible from my bed. There was a time, and it was many years ago now, when I had to stay in a hospital for almost nine weeks.

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