I received an email from the publisher of Oh William! with a blurb that said “because you loved Taylor Jenkins Reid…” – I didn’t have to read any more after that. I absolutely loved TJR! I fell in love with Evelyn Hugo, Daisy Jones and enjoyed the ride of Malibu Rising. Couple that with reading how the author of Oh William, Elizabeth Strout, won a Pulitzer Prize for her writing, and I really wanted to give this one a try.

Strout’s iconic heroine Lucy Barton, of My Name Is Lucy Barton, recounts her complex, tender relationship with William, her first husband–and longtime, on-again-off-again friend and confidant. Recalling their college years, through the birth of their daughters, the painful dissolution of their marriage, and the lives they built with other people, Strout weaves a portrait, stunning in its subtlety, of a decades-long partnership.

A masterful exploration of human empathy, Oh William! captures the joy and pain of watching children grow up and start families of their own; of discovering family secrets, late in life, that rearrange everything we think we know about those closest to us; and the way people live and love, despite the variety of obstacles we face in doing so. And at the heart of this story is the unforgettable, indomitable voice of Lucy Barton, who once again 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.”

Oh William is book 3 of a series about Lucy Barton’s life. It does read well as a stand alone. Book 1 was made into a Broadway show that starred Laura Linney. I had to see what this was all about!

As a fan of women’s fiction, there is a certain pace that I have become accustomed to. Stories can move quickly, and sometimes there are twists and turns you never saw coming. Characters come alive and I look for books that make me want to continue turning the pages. This story’s pace was very different from that.

Oh William reads as Lucy’s stream of thoughts, and she jumps from one story to the next, eventually weaving together both the past (her relationship with her first husband William, her children growing up and subsequent divorce) and the present (2nd husband has passed away, and William is asking her to join him on a trip to uncover a family secret with William’s parents). We meet Lucy’s family, get snippets of how Lucy grew up, and her relationship with William’s mother and the story of William’s father.

The action in this story is very passive. I did not feel like I was there in the thick of it, but rather I was sitting in a rocking chair on a porch, listening to my grandmother tell stories of her life. Some places Lucy would say “I won’t talk about that” and then later she would reminding us that she didn’t want to talk about it but in order to make sense of the current story, we had to have a bit of extra information. Having come off of a story that was fast moving and a little bit of a spicy romance, this was an interesting change of pace.

Strout can weave together a nice story, but you have to be in the right frame of mind for it. I would not call this a quick read or an exciting read, but it was nice to step outside of my story comfort zone and read something new.

Thank you to the publishers for providing an advanced copy for review via #netgalley