At school, however, Lucy had access to books and warmth. She remembers that at school, in church and the community at large, she and her family were ostracized. Lucy remembers always being alone and lonely, hungry, cold and sometimes locked up in a truck while her parents worked. From this event, the reader is taken to Lucy’s childhood in the Midwest where she grew up poor in a dysfunctional family. During this illness her mother, from whom Lucy has been estranged for most of her adult life, comes to visit and stays with Lucy in the hospital for 5 days. For Lucy, now a middle aged woman with grown daughters, the jumping off point for her story is the time when she, a young mother in New York City in the 1980s, became ill and was hospitalized for nine weeks. There is a lot of skipping around, similar to the rhythms of a conversation where one might get sidetracked or go off topic while relating some story. Lucy Barton narrates her story in an intimate, confessional way. This novel is about more than the mother/daughter relationship though My Name is Lucy Barton is also about being a writer and the process of writing one’s story.
In My Name is Lucy Barton, the narrator is older, reflecting on her past and trying to make sense of it. In The Language of Flowers the narrator was quite young, an orphan, and dealing in real time with the daily ramifications of imperfect parenting. Unintentionally, I have read two novels in a row that have to do with imperfect mothering told from the perspectives of women who have been imperfectly parented and who in turn recognize their own shortcomings.
This is a story about a mother who loves her daughter.
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