The Best American Short Stories 2013

"It interests me how we find ways to feel superior to another person, another group of people. It happens everywhere, and all the time. Whatever we call it, I think it's the lowest part of who we are, this need to find someone else to put down."

My Name Is Lucy Barton is the first novel in the Amgash series by best-selling American author, Elizabeth Strout. As Lucy Barton lies in her New York hospital room with its superb view of the Chrysler Building, trying to fight an infection after an appendicectomy, she chats to her mother while waiting for the doctor, a kind, kind man, to visit.

Her ever-wakeful mother, whom she has not seen for many years, is there at the request of Lucy's husband, William. Over the five days of her visit, they share stories and observations of people they both knew when Lucy was growing up in Amgash, Illinois.

Her mother's stories stir other memories for Lucy, much less pleasant to recall, of a hard childhood in an unhealthy family with parents who love their children "imperfectly", doling out both cruelty and kindness. Does her mother not remember these? Or has she repressed them?

The real love and care that stands out in Lucy's memory came from those unrelated by blood: the school janitor, teachers and counsellors, a cashier in a cake shop. And later, neighbours, a writer, that kind doctor. Her husband, frustrated that Lucy doesn't understand she "could be loved, was lovable."

Strout's writing, both in style and subject matter, is reminiscent of Sebastian Barry with shades of Anne Tyler. Strout writes about ordinary people leading what they believe are ordinary lives, at least until they learn differently. Lucy says about her childhood: "that huge pieces of knowledge about the world were missing that can never be replaced" but she managed to learn how to act, to imitate others.

Strout's prose is often exquisite "…I see now that he recognised what I did not: that in spite of my plenitude, I was lonely. Lonely was the first flavour I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me" and she gives her characters many insightful observations ".. she said that her job as a writer of fiction was to report on the human condition, to tell us who we are and what we think and what we do." Powerful and ultimately uplifting.