NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout
explores the mysteries of marriage and the secrets we keep, as a former
couple reckons with where they've come from--and what they've left
behind.
**
BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST - ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Maureen
Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air
**
"Elizabeth Strout is one of my very favorite writers, so the fact that
Oh William! may well be my favorite of her books is a mathematical
equation for joy. The depth, complexity, and love contained in these
pages is a miraculous achievement."--Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch
House
*I would like to say a few things about my first husband, William.
*
Lucy Barton is a writer, but her ex-husband, William, remains a hard man
to read. William, she confesses, has always been a mystery to me.
Another mystery is why the two have remained connected after all these
years. They just are.
So Lucy is both surprised and not surprised when William asks her to
join him on a trip to investigate a recently uncovered family
secret--one of those secrets that rearrange everything we think we know
about the people closest to us. What happens next is nothing less than
another example of what Hilary Mantel has called Elizabeth Strout's
"perfect attunement to the human condition." There are fears and
insecurities, simple joys and acts of tenderness, and revelations about
affairs and other spouses, parents and their children. On every page of
this exquisite novel we learn more about the quiet forces that hold us
together--even after we've grown apart.
At the heart of this story is the indomitable voice of Lucy Barton, who
offers a profound, lasting reflection on the very nature of existence.
"This is the way of life," Lucy says: "the many things we do not know
until it is too late."
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review,
The Washington Post, Time, Vulture, She Reads
