My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout, book review

Strout avoids sentimentality by imbuing Lucy's narrative with a pervasive sense of uncertainty

In this slight, spare and tender novel, the eponymous central character of Lucy Barton tells the story of a time when, for "almost nine weeks" in the mid-1980s, she was hospitalised following complications arising from the removal of her appendix. In the course of her stay, she is visited by her mother, from whom she had been estranged for years,which offers each of them an opportunity to explore the nature of their relationship.

Lucy, a writer living in New York, is making these reflections in the later years of her life. The memories of her weeks in hospital set her thinking about the years she spent growing up in Illinois; about the loves and friendships that have touched her life; and about the pain of her marriage break-up. It is a tale of sadness and remembering, but of moments of piercing joy too.

Most of these moments arise from Lucy's recollections of the brief period of distant intimacy she shared with her mother during her weeks of poor health. "I remember wanting my mother to ask me about my life", says Lucy. And Lucy's mother – who cannot "say the words I love you" – never does. Instead, she shares with her daughter several weeks of apparently pointless conversation. And from the silences that surround their exchanges, we see the pair develop for one another fresh feelings of sympathy and love.

There is a risk that these kinds of awakenings can feel mawkish. But Strout is able to avoid sentimentality by imbuing Lucy's narrative with a pervasive sense of uncertainty (she routinely confesses that her memories might be the product of wish-thinking). For most of the novel she speaks in a manner that is flat, hesitant, muted, deliberate. This means that her bursts of peculiar lyricism carry extra force and weight.

At times, the Pulitzer prize-winning novelist's prose can be so lacking in adornment as to be tedious but, quietly elegiac, this is the story of a single life that also manages to tell the story of many.

Viking, £12.99. Order at t£10.99 inc. p&p from the Independent Bookshop