Oh WIlliam! (2022)

Why this one?

I’m currently making my way through the 2022 Booker Shortlist.

Oh William! is by Elizabeth Strout (1956- ; active 1982- ) born Portland, Maine, USA. She studied law, receiving her J.D. from Syracuse College of Law, as well as spending time at Oxford in the UK. Her first short story was published by New Letters magazine in 1982, and continued to have short stories published in literary magazines.  She worked briefly in law and subsequently in teaching while working on her debut novel. 

Amy and Isabelle was published in 1998 and was a critical and commercial success, nominated for the 2000 Orange/Women’s Prize (won by Linda Grant’s When I Lived in Modern Times) and the Pen/Faulkner Prize as well as being dramatized for a TV movie. Her third novel, Olive Kitteridge, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 2016 she published My Name is Lucy Barton, the first of (to date) four novels to feature the titular heroine. It was longlisted for the 2016 Booker, and was followed quickly by Anything is Possible (2017) which features interlinked short stories set around Barton’s hometown. Oh William! (published 2021) is a more fully-fledged return to Lucy’s own story, which has already been continued in this year’s Lucy By the Sea, set during the pandemic. 

Thoughts, etc.

Oh William! returns to life of author Lucy Barton, heroine of Strout’s 2016 novel.  We find her a little later in life, having recently been widowed following the death of her second husband David.  Much of this novel focuses on her relationship with her first husband William, who also remarried but is left alone again part-way through the book.  Lucy herself is now a successful novelist, comfortable in New York and far away from her troubled childhood in Amgash, Illinois. 

It’s a novel that focuses on the big things in life: relationships, family, and in an indirect but very nonetheless obvious way, aging and mortality. It’s also about class and how intrinsically tied to identify it can be.  Lucy talks of holiday’s with William’s mother Catherine, seemingly as affluent as can be and (in stark contrast to Lucy) comfortable in lavish social settings and Cayman Island holidays. Yet the novel hinges on a journey back to her roots in Maine, to explore the discover of a half-sister William never knew he had. On this journey they discover Catherine’s true roots, which cause a reassessment of their own knowledge of both her and themselves. 

Elsewhere the novel is riddled with infidelities, hidden truths and other aspects of ‘unknowabilty’ that hinder characters’ ability to understand each other for long periods of life.  And yet despite this, Strout celebrates the connections that endure in spite of this.  The depiction of the relationship between Lucy and William is painfully realistic - fatally flawed as an ongoing romantic endeavour but nonetheless enduring as a friendship, in part because of the pair’s now-adult children, but in part because of a more enduring connection. 

There are some big, deep, universal themes in here, but overall it stands out from this year’s other shortlisted novels in its humble and human feel. It’s stylistically economical and, for me, beautiful. The sigh of the title is repeated throughout and characterises the tone of the novel - every time it occurs it seems to represent both a sigh of exasperation with a character’s flaws but at the same time an expression of love for the connection expressed by the knowledge of those flaws.  It’s a deep and moving book and one that felt refreshingly down to earth and relatable compared to some of the bigger picture ‘issues’ tackled by much of the rest of the list. 

I came to Oh William! not having read any of the other Lucy Barton books, and like many was worried that this would would in some way impede my enjoyment of this one (this has definitely been the case on previous occasions jumping in to the back end of a trilogy.)  I needn’t have been concerned though: another of the hugely impressive things Strout does here is to fill in the gaps with just enough detail to make Lucy’s character make sense, while leaving out enough to make you intrigued enough to jump back to those earlier books - which I’ll certainly be doing at some point in the not too distant future! 

Score

9

Another wonderful book, of a totally different style to anything else on the shortlist, and one that makes me very keen to check out more of Strout’s work (starting with those other Lucy Barton books of course!)

For reference, my ranking of the shortlist is as follows. I enjoyed all of them in one way or another, but the top three were definitely my standouts. Personal preference as ever - no pretence of objective judgement or predicting of winners (though as it happens I do think Everett will win!)

1. The Trees, Percival Everett - 9.5

2. Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan - 9 

3. Oh William!, Elizabeth Strout -  9 

4. Glory, NoViolet Bulawayo - 8 

5. Treacle Walker, Alan Garner - 7.5

6. The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, Shehan Karunatilaka - 7 .5

Next up

This enjoyable diversion completed, I’m jumping back to my read-through of the Women’s Prize winners with Zadie Smith’s On Beauty (2006).