By Elizabeth Strout—Random House, 2021
Elizabeth Strout is a favorite of ours. We loved Olive Kitteridge (2008) and My Name is Lucy Barton (2016); now we rejoin Lucy in Oh William!. Newly widowed and a successful writer in her 60s, Lucy has retained an amicable relationship with her first husband, the father of her two daughters. She accepts him now, warts and all, and the warts are not insignificant. But despite Lucy’s investigative nature, she’s yet to fully understand what makes WIlliam tick. The story develops from a newlyweds’ love through Lucy and WIlliam’s divorce over his serial philandering, to Lucy’s satisfying marriage to her second husband, while WIlliam is married and divorced twice more. Yet it’s Lucy whom William asks to join him on a road trip to Maine to investigate his vague ancestry. On the road together, both feeling vulnerable and alone, they have a chance to understand each other on new levels. Their journey is the heart of the novel—a story of regret, reflection, revelation of some surprising family secrets and, ultimately, the way love matures over time.
