New fiction: My Name is Lucy Barton
Eithne Farry reads the latest offering from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout
By 
Psychologies
The titular Lucy Barton recalls a period in her life when she spent nine weeks lying in a hospital bed, winnowed by a strange illness.
Missing her husband and two small daughters, she was kept company by her estranged mother for five revealing days.
In delicate, tender but ruthless reveries Lucy ponders the poverty and darkness of her rural childhood, her faltering marriage, her love for her daughters and her life as a writer.
The is spare but conversational, and agleam with extraordinary psychological insight.
My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout (Viking, £12.99) is out now
