My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout (2016)

What strikes me most about this novel is that Strout tells her story not so much by what she says but by what she leaves out. The truth is in the spaces. I understand the book to be an example of sustained dramatic irony--the reader understands what the narrator never realizes or admits to knowing. I have read several reviews of the novel, and they don't mention this aspect. Perhaps I misunderstand, but this interpretation makes perfect sense to me.

On the surface nothing much happens. Lucy's mother comes to sit with her for a few days during her extended hospital stay. Although they have not seen each other for years, they talk only of trivial matters, gossip about the people Lucy had known in her youth, usually about marriages that have failed. Here's where the spaces come into play. As narrator, Lucy tells us that she never asks about her father, and that she and her mother never mention what Lucy thinks of as "the Thing," some traumatic event of her childhood, which is never explained.

Interspersed with Lucy's narration of her mother's visit are almost stream-of-consciousness accounts of her early and subsequent life. We hear of her attachments to her neighbor, her doctor, and even random strangers--to any who show her a speck of kindness. We learn--in the spaces--that she never feels worthy of love. We sense how broken she is, even though she never expresses it and perhaps does not even realize it.

This is a story about love, but it more a story of love withheld and the damage that can inflict. Unfortunately, a pattern of parental abuse and neglect can pass from generation to generation, as in this novel, although the adult child may not realize that she or he is repeating aspects of parental behavior.

This is subtle novel, beautiful in its depth of feeling. It has been longlisted for England's Booker Prize for this year's best novel written in English.