My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout review – powerful storytelling

An exploration of the love between mother and daughter is both affecting and wise

There is a moment in My Name Is Lucy Barton when the protagonist, struggling to find her voice on a creative writing course, is advised: “You will have only one story… You’ll write your one story many ways. Don’t ever worry about story. You will have only one.”

In Elizabeth Strout’s deeply affecting novel, the eponymous heroine endeavours to make sense of her story in spite of the vagaries of memory, the power of collective denial and the masterful ability of those closest to her to shroud her emotional needs in misunderstandings and repression.

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