Oh William! was published by Random House in 2021, continuing the Lucy Barton series that had begun with My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016) and Anything Is Possible (2017). Lucy is now in her sixties, widowed for the second time, and back in contact with William — her first husband, the father of her two daughters, a man she divorced decades ago but never entirely left behind.
The novel’s emotional architecture is complex. Lucy still loves William — not romantically, but with the deep, exasperated affection that comes from having shared a life with someone, having raised children together, and having watched each other fail. William, for his part, has just been left by his third wife and is rattled — not heartbroken (he lacks the emotional capacity for heartbreak) but disoriented, like a man who has misplaced something essential and cannot remember what it was.
The plot, such as it is, involves a road trip to Maine to investigate a discovery about William’s late mother, Catherine — a German war bride who may have had a secret first family. But the plot is secondary to the observation: Lucy watching William, remembering their marriage, understanding things about him that he cannot understand about himself. Strout writes about the failure of intimacy — the ways that people who share a bed, a kitchen, a set of children can remain fundamentally unknown to each other — with a precision that is both comic and heartbreaking.
The title — “Oh William!” — captures Lucy’s tone exactly: rueful, affectionate, slightly despairing. It is the exclamation of a woman who has spent forty years watching a man make the same mistakes and who loves him anyway, not because of his virtues but because of the shared history that cannot be undone.
Collecting Oh William!
First edition (Random House, New York, 2021): Cloth, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $10–$20
- Signed copies: $25–$60
- Later editions: $5–$10