Books - Review

Lucy is in hospital recovering from surgery when her mother who she hasn't seen for years comes to visit. They talk a bit about Lucy's childhood, which was troubled and difficult. Her father had PTSD from WWII and made the kids' life difficult sometimes. Anyway, in the end, the novel finishes, blah blah.

A bit dreary and empty I thought but maybe that was the point. Possibly it was poignant, and I didn't pick up on it.

Olive is a retired schoolteacher living a quiet life with her husband in a quiet town in Maine, USA. But she has strong opinions and great empathy and she isn't shy of intervening in any situation she feels she can help.

Fabulous little book, like a set of short stories almost, in fact I now realise some of the chapters were published as magazine stories. Olive sometimes only has a minor role to play, but we follow her and her contemporaries as they cope with growing old. Won the Pulitzer prize.

Lucy Barton is grieving her second husband when her first husband, William, with whom she is still good friends, pops round to ask her to go with him on a trip to try and uncover some secrets from his family history. Off they go, learning much about the nature of humanity as they go.

Jolly good.