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Fiction.
Literature.
HTML: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.
ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Maureen Corrigan, NPR??s Fresh Air ? ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review,The Washington Post,Time, Vulture, She Reads
??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: ??th… (meer)
Een vrouw van middelbare leeftijd heeft nog altijd last van het verleden, maar weet zich steeds verder te ontwikkelen door relaties en reflectie op zichzelf ( )
“wat is het leven toch iets vreemds”/What a strange thing life is. Zelfs op relatief hoge leeftijd leert een mens nog altijd iets over zichzelf en over de mensen die dicht bij je staan. Dat is een beetje het centrale thema van deze roman. Dit is pas de derde roman van Strout die ik lees, nadat ik eerder aangenaam verrast was door Olive Kitteridge en het iets mindere vervolg Olive, Again. Opnieuw staat een oudere vrouw centraal, Lucy Barton, blijkbaar het alter ego van Strout, die ze als personage al eerder opvoerde. Ze vertelt over haar eerste echtgenoot, William, met wie ze twee dochters heeft, en waarvan ze wel scheidde maar met wie ze nog altijd een goed contact heeft. In die mate zelfs dat ze in het tweede deel van het boek samen op road trip gaan, op zoek naar de halfzus van William. Het bijzondere aan deze roman is de verteltrant van Strout. Ze laat Lucy voortdurend aan het woord, in een erg spreektalige stijl, dikwijls van de hak op de tak, geregeld zichzelf corrigerend of nuancerend, met voortdurend charmant-aandoenlijke uitroepen, zoals: “Oh, William!”. Die stijl is functioneel: ze illustreert hoe Lucy meer en meer moet vaststellen hoe ze zichzelf, William en eigenlijk het leven zelve amper kent. Er komt dus behoorlijk wat introspectie aan bod in dit boek: Lucy bevraagt voortdurend de handelingen en uitspraken van William en anderen, maar ook van zichzelf. Niet zwaar op de hand, want dit boek leest zeer vlot weg. Het slot illustreert dan ook perfect waar iedereen die wat ouder wordt uiteindelijk op uitkomt: “But when I think Oh William!, don’t I mean Oh Lucy! too? Don’t I mean Oh Everyone, Oh dear Everybody in this whole wide world, we do not know anybody, not even ourselves! — Except a little tiny, tiny bit we do. — But we are all mythologies, mysterious. We are all mysteries, is what I mean. — This may be the only thing in the world I know to be true.” ( )
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
This book is dedicated to my husband, Jim Tirrney
And to anyone who needs it—-this is for you
Eerste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
I would like to say a few things about my first husband, William.
Citaten
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
What a strange thing life is.
This is the way of life: the many things we do not know until it is too late.
I turned and I said, "How are your night terrors these days, William?" William opened his hand and said, "They're gone." Then he added, "My life got worse, so they stopped."
Mommy, I cried inside myself, Mommy, I am so frightened! And the nice mother I have made up over the years answered: Yes, I know.
People are lonely, is my point here. Many people can't say to those they know well what it is they feel they might want to say.
"I'm really mean in my head, you wouldn't believe the mean thoughts I have." William threw his hand up and said, "Lucy, everyone is mean in their head. Jesus." "They are?" I asked. He half laughed then, but it was a pleasant laugh. "Yes, Lucy, people are mean in their heads. Their private thoughts. Are frequently mean. I thought you knew that, you're the writer. Jesus Christ, Lucy."
"She came from less than nothing. She came from trash." The word was like a slap across my face. That word is always like a slap across my face.
I walked through the double doors and saw right away that their restaurant was closed. Open at 5:00, a sign said. I gave a huge sigh and turned around to head back, and I thought to myself: When does anybody in this state eat? And just as I thought that I saw the fattest man I have ever seen. He was coming through the double doors that I had just come through, and he had pushed one of them open but this was not enough space for him to get through. He did not seem old; he may have been thirty, I do not know. But his pants went out on the sides of him like a ship almost, and his face was buried into itself. I let go of one of the suitcases and I pulled the other door open for him and he smiled in a way that seemed to me to be ashamed, and I said, "There you go," and he said "Thanks" with a kind of shy smile and he went up to the front desk in the lobby. I thought as I walked back to the airport—I thought: I know what that man feels like. (Except of course I do not.) But I thought: It's odd, because on one hand I think I am invisible, but on the other I know what it is like to be marked as separate from society, only in my case no one knows it when they see me. But I thought that about that fat man. And about myself.
As I looked out the window at New York City, I felt what I have almost always felt when I have flown into New York, and that was a sense of awe and gratitude that this huge, sprawling place had taken me in—had let me live there.
I suddenly remembered times early in our marriage in our Village apartment when I had felt terrible. It was about my parents, and the feeling that I had left them behind—as I had—and I would sometimes sit in our small bedroom and weep with a kind of horrendous inner pain, and William would come to me and say, "Lucy, talk to me, what is it?" And I would just shake my head until he went away. What a really awful thing I had done. I had not thought of this until now. To deny my husband any chance of comforting me—oh, it was an unspeakably awful thing. And I had not known. This is the way of life: the many things we do not know until it is too late.
But we are all mythologies, mysterious. We are all mysteries, is what I mean.
We went to bed and he was very kind but then he said "I'm shooting into Mommy! I'm shooting into Mommy!" and this frightened me beyond reason. After that I had to take two tranquilizers I had in my pocketbook and then I fell asleep next to him and slept through the night with my head over his chest.
But who ever really knows the experience of another? (39%)
People are lonely, is my point here. Many people can't say to those they know well what it is they feel they might want to say. (46%)
We crave authority. We do. No matter what anyone says we crave that sense of authority. Of believing that in the presence of this person we are safe. (51%)
Once every so often -- at the very most -- I think someone actually chooses something. Otherwise we're following something -- we don't even know what is but we follow it, Lucy. (58%)
And the thought came and went like a small bird through my mind. (61%)
What a really awful thing I had done.
I had not thought of this now. To deny my husband any chance of comforting me -- oh, it was an unspeakable awful thing. (76%)
I would give it all up, all the success I have had as a writer, all of it I would give up -- in a heartbeat I would give it up -- for a family that was together and children who knew they were clearly loved by both their parents who had stayed together and who loved each other too. (81%)
I could not believe this; it was a huge wave that poured over me. William was like the light in the museum, only I had lived my life thinking it was worth something.
Then I thought: It ws worth something. (86%)
Don't I mean Oh Everybody, Oh dear Everybody in this whole wide world, we do not know anybody, not even ourselves. (87%)
Laatste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
This may be the only thing in the world I know to be true.
Fiction.
Literature.
HTML: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.
ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Maureen Corrigan, NPR??s Fresh Air ? ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review,The Washington Post,Time, Vulture, She Reads
??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: ??th