Books: “Oh William!” by Elizabeth Strout

Just before the pandemic hit, Laura Linney gave a bravura one-woman performance of a play called “My Name is Lucy Barton.” The show was based on Elizabeth Strout’s best-selling novel of the same name from a few years earlier.

Both the character, Lucy Barton, her troubled relationship with her mother, and of course Linney’s performance struck a nerve among theatergoers—and with Strout. Strout fully acknowledges that the play, set in the 1980s, “gave bloom” to “Oh, William!” her third in a series of novels featuring Lucy. This one, which takes place in the present, focuses on her relationship with her first husband William, with whom she is still friendly.

William has remarried twice and unfortunately both marriages went sour. Despondent and lonely, he turns back to Lucy, asking her to accompany him to Maine, where a half-sister has been found through an ancestry Internet site. Once they arrive in the lunar landscape that is northern Maine, other secrets arise and the world shifts.

This is a sensitively written book that touches on the fact that life isn’t always a matter of choosing a path, it sometimes just sweeps us along and we wind up in places we never expected. Not speaking geographically either. “What choice do any of us have, except to be okay?” Lucy asks at one point. The book is also about communication and how the characters’ failure to do so has cost each of them dearly.

“Oh William!” is not action-packed, nor does it feature big splashy characters. I was so fond of  “Oh William!” I really hope they film it. Script by Kenneth Lonergan, Lucy played by Linney, and maybe a Jason Bateman type as William (reprising their relationship in Ozark). Focus Films, are you listening?