Oh William! In a world of too many books to read, read Elizabeth Strout

There’s an argument for God* to be made in the way that sometimes, right when you need it most, a book finds you. It’s how I felt about Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners, and John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, and it’s how I feel about Elizabeth Strout’s Oh William. The book was already extremely overdue at the library, and I had intended to put it in the pile among (too many) others that I ambitiously checked out only to run up against the realities of my limited time. But I’d been looking forward to it, having recently finished Tell Me Everything which I loved, and I figured what is the worst the public library can do? (I know, I know, I owe the library more respect then that. I do know.)

And well Oh William is like all the other Strout books I’ve read in its direct tone, in its simplicity of story, in its beauty of writing. In this one Lucy Barton reflects on her first marriage with William. What brought her to him, why she left, what the staying and leaving cost her, what she needed from him when they were together, what she needed from him after, and how you can love someone through all the many odd and unexpected permutations of a life.

More then a story about their marriage though – or alongside it maybe – is that of William’s mother, Catherine. How she left her one-year old daughter to go start a life with another man, and how the rest of her life was haunted by that decision (and William in discovering this secret must confront the truth that his mother was not who or how he thought she was, but someone more and different, and aren’t we all). Lucy makes the parallels to her own leaving of her daughters when she left William and how this decision hurt her daughters and was necessary. I guess something about what sacrifices mothers are called to make, or make differently from fathers (or presented as such, I guess).

Why did I need this book right now? I suppose there was something to the reminder in it that the stories we have about ourselves and the people we love are just that: stories. That they are written, rewritten and edited in the too many experiences or misunderstandings of our everyday. That we are not and are relationships are not One Thing.

And in a time – still a time – when there is much that is far, far beyond our scope of control (if not influence), there is something so heartening and humbling in the reminder that of this – the story of your life and its decisions – you do have some authority.

*Stipulated I do not believe in God, but you can try to translate as something like love, or interconnection, or mystery.