In the middle of the novel, the main character shows a writer some
pages of her work, and the writer comments on them, thereby providing us
with a neat explanation of what the book that we have been reading has
been doing all this time. Very clever, if a little heavy-handed, and it
did make me appreciate what are essentially long scenes of conversation
between a woman and her mother a bit more.
Still, the story never really got to me on an emotional level. I didn't quite believe in any of these people. And it seemed a bit unbalanced, occasionally wandering into other plot-lines or reflections (Lucy's relationship to her husband, to a friend, her development as a writer) that often felt tangential and undeveloped.
It was interesting to read this so soon after finishing The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls' memoir of growing up extremely poor, with parents who were willfully disconnected from society, and had, shall we say, a peculiar approach to raising children. My Name is Lucy Barton features a main character who seems to have come from a similarly traumatic and difficult childhood -- although her parents don't seem to have particularly outlandish notions of raising free spirits, they are extremely poor, and occasionally treat their children in ways that will strike most readers as shocking. Walls mostly writes about her past, without saying a lot about how she eventually broke away from her parents, or what happened to her afterwards, or how she interacts with them now. Lucy Barton, on the other hand, is chronicling several days of conversation with her mother as a way of obliquely shedding light on the past, and implicitly considering the kind of relationship they have, and can have, in the present. Very different approaches, and they complement each other in curious ways.
Still, the story never really got to me on an emotional level. I didn't quite believe in any of these people. And it seemed a bit unbalanced, occasionally wandering into other plot-lines or reflections (Lucy's relationship to her husband, to a friend, her development as a writer) that often felt tangential and undeveloped.
It was interesting to read this so soon after finishing The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls' memoir of growing up extremely poor, with parents who were willfully disconnected from society, and had, shall we say, a peculiar approach to raising children. My Name is Lucy Barton features a main character who seems to have come from a similarly traumatic and difficult childhood -- although her parents don't seem to have particularly outlandish notions of raising free spirits, they are extremely poor, and occasionally treat their children in ways that will strike most readers as shocking. Walls mostly writes about her past, without saying a lot about how she eventually broke away from her parents, or what happened to her afterwards, or how she interacts with them now. Lucy Barton, on the other hand, is chronicling several days of conversation with her mother as a way of obliquely shedding light on the past, and implicitly considering the kind of relationship they have, and can have, in the present. Very different approaches, and they complement each other in curious ways.
