Oh William!: A Novel

Reading the realities Elizabeth Strout writes: savored every word. I actually read LUCY BY THE SEA first, and liked finding the bits of story In OH WILLIAM! that layered and enriched that read.

The story in Oh William! is told in the distinctive voice of Lucy Barton. The narrative is at times disjointed, repetitive, stuttering, and awkward. It is also honest, raw, and deeply relatable.

The book is an exploration of Lucy's relationship with her first husband, William Gerhardt, a seventy-one-year-old scientist (parasitologist) and professor who still goes to the laboratory every day but is keenly conscious of the fact that his younger colleagues are bypassing him. In the years after Lucy learned of his philandering and left him, William remarried twice and, as the story opens, is living with his much younger third wife, Estelle, with whom he has a daughter, Bridget. William did not want more children, but he loves Bridget deeply, as he does his two older daughters with Lucy, both of whom are married. Lucy is now sixty-four years old and a published author. Her second husband, David, died recently and she is grieving. Early in the book, Lucy admits that William, her husband for twenty years, "has always been a mystery to me -- and to our girls as well." But she also reveals that "William is the only person I ever felt safe with. He is the only home I ever had" even though there were times during the marriage that she "loathed him." William is the son of a German prisoner of war who, during World War II, was transported to one of four camps in remote areas of Maine to work in the potato fields. There, he met and fell in love with William's mother, Catherine, who was, at the time, married to a potato farmer.

As Oh Wiliam! opens, William and Lucy meet occasionally in a diner for coffee. Two years ago, during one such meeting, he told her he had been experiencing night terrors. One involved his late mother, Catherine, who seemed to be with him, hovering. Some time later, Estelle gifted him a subscription to an online ancestry site. It revealed that Catherine had another child two years before William was born, fathered by her first husband, the potato farmer. William had no idea he had an older sister, Lois, and has been unable to locate a death certificate for her. Rather, he discovers that she married in 1969, and had children and grandchildren. At first, he refuses to believe it because he cannot understand why he was never told about Lois as a child. Where was she while he was growing up? And more importantly, did his mother abandon her own child? How could she do such a thing?

A few months later, William asks Lucy to come to his apartment right away. Worried about him, she agrees. When she arrives, she learns that William returned from a conference in San Francisco to find a hand-written note from Estelle announcing that she has moved out. She informs William that he is "kind of unreachable a lot. But you're a good man. You just seem faraway at times. I mean a lot of times." Lucy spends the afternoon with William and they go out to dinner, over which William acknowledges that he does have an older sister. And she must have been about a year old when his mother abandoned her. A week later, William asks Lucy to accompany him to Maine for a few days. He explains he has located Lois' address and wants to just "go look." Lucy, still mourning David and lonely, agrees because she also still cares deeply for William and wants to help him find answers about his family, especially Catherine, with whom Lucy had a complex, but loving relationship.

Lucy shares her innermost thoughts and feelings about her life and relationships. Events and mentions of various other characters stir up her memories, and she details how she and William met, fell in love, and what being married to him was like. She reveals the isolation she has always felt, in part due to her atypical childhood. She explains that she feels invisible in the world "in the deepest way," even though she knows that she truly isn't, in no small measure because she is a mother -- and she adores her daughters. Even as a successful author, she feels the weight of her own childhood bearing down upon her at times.

The road to Maine turns out to be paved with little epiphanies. Their fondness for each other is evident (they still refer to each other by the nicknames they used when married -- she is "Button" and he is "Pillie"), but they also still get on each other's nerves. He wears khaki pants that are far too short and she resents his insensitivity to her needs, while he gripes that she seems to always be hungry but never eats anything. The trip reminds her "what a hideous thing marriage was for me at times those years with William . . . Intimacy became a ghastly thing." She recalls the ways in which William, a man who has always remained emotionally detached and unavailable to the women with whom he has been involved, betrayed her during their marriage and how she responded to his duplicitous behavior, as well as the times that William acted like a spoiled and petulant child.

With Lucy at his side, William confronts the truth about his family -- his father was a member of the Hitler Youth and his mother was not who she wanted the world to think she was. In fact, it was his father's background that caused Lucy's family to reject William and refuse to attend their wedding. She examines why she "felt a little bit like things were not entirely real," beginning on the day she married William at the country club to which his mother belonged, and how the feeling persisted during the entirety of the marriage. They navigate to Catherine's childhood home, a place William has never before seen, and what they find provides new context to Catherine's habits and actions. They also find their way to the address William found for Lois, the former Miss Potato Blossom Queen. Indeed, she still lives in the cozy home, having been widowed five years ago. Will the siblings enjoy a happy meeting?

Oh William! is a meditation on marriage, family, and connectedness. Strout's seemingly effortless storytelling brings Lucy and William vividly to life and invests readers in their well-being. Because Lucy and William have two daughters, their lives are always going to be, to some extent, intertwined. The story is an argument for the proposition that love and affection linger long after intimate relationships end. Their daughters are puzzled by their parents' road trip, and one of them even asks if Lucy and William are going to get back together, but Lucy assures her that will not happen. Still, years after their divorce and marriages to other partners, Lucy's feelings about William remain conflicted and multi-layered. Through Lucy, Strout contemplates whether it is possible to ever really know another person and, if not, whether that really matters, in the long run. Is it perhaps possible to form an unbreakable connection with someone that will withstand myriad little aggravations, large betrayals, and divorce? Do forgiveness and acceptance of the fact that "we are all mythologies, mysterious" bring peace, and permit us to escape that feeling of "unreality" that Lucy experienced for so many years? Stout's unembellished consideration of those questions is engaging, poignant, and emotionally resonant.

Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book.

Another excellent book about marital and family relationships, with keen insights on human emotions.

I really like Elizabeth Strout’s writing style. It always feels like she is talking directly to you, with the book being one long, enjoyable conversation. This is certainly the case with O’William, although I did not get overly invested in the characters or excited about the plot (I am comparing this to how much I enjoyed the persona of Oliver Kitteridge and the drama of her adventures). I listened to the audiobook which is read well enough by Kimberly Farr. This is the third in a series, but it worked fine as a stand-alone novel (I have not read the first two).

I love Elizabeth Strout's writing. Her simple language contains many truths. Her characters have flaws, and yet are so warm and human and generous.