My Name is Lucy Barton
No one in this book is expecting anything by anyone. Lucy knows perfectly that her family is not the best one of this world and she searched somewhere else the answers she wanted. She grew up in a poor family and so to her, with a life plenty of sacrifices, money didn't mean a lot in crucial parts of her existence although as she adds money means power, and maybe freedom from life's chains, let's add this. She is not attached as some people could be, at her financial situation but she analyzes her existence and the one of her family and friends also thanks to her mother. What happened at the end? A lot of suffering, a lot of failures, but also joys, happiness, because life is this and more.
Lucy re-meets her mother once to the hospital for a serious illness. Her mother won't stay with her at long. She has a peculiar and special characteristic: her mother is in grade to see the future, to imagining what will happen and she will also imagine the future of Lucy. A lady, the mother of Lucy, specialized in telling her, stories of sad marriages.
I had a relative I miss a lot specialized in telling stories of car/motorbike, domestic incidents and so I found absolutely familiar the character of Lucy's mother and it is also true something else: a mother, as also will be in this case, won't never answer to a simple question like: "Mom do you love me?" maybe because it is simply implied, although a real manifestation of sentiments sometimes for mothers are not possible because of their characters.
Close to the end, the mother of Lucy won't want that she would assist at her physical departure. They're strong and unforgettable events. She will prefer to die alone, for not giving her this sadness; loving her she did it.
Lucy's family at the same time hasn't been supportive with her, because she has always lived as someone different from that family, as someone who fought for reaching her goals, for being published, for searching to put into words a complicated existence as the one she was living.
It's terribly complicated to write down something when a family is dysfunctional, when there is not happiness; reporting sad facts is devastating; at the same time it's a gift; a gift donated for let know that it is possible to live a good existence although sometimes it hasn't been fair at the beginning, it hasn't been good and there were a lot of fights.
Just, people must want it. It's a positive message this one to my point of view, given by this book. No one of course is removing any single sad experience, but people can change for good the course of their existence if they want.
This book is written with an intensity, clarity, profoundity and knowledge of human feelings and attention that it is shockingly beauty. It's like a long narration, a long talk, an interview, realistically, where the person tells her life, what happened, intersecting the story with anedocts told by Lucy's mother, the days she stayed to the hospital with her and they both looked at the Chrysler for some company from the hospital.
New York is the city protagonist of these stories; New York Stories, Lucy calls these stories, because New York in this sense is in grade of appearing and disappearing, with its own protagonists, real, precious for then evaporating somewhere else.
It's an historical tale also because it remarks the big problematic of AIDS and what it meant for Lucy, who lost people because of this terrible and scaring illness with mention at the Twin Towers Attack on 9/11 and at the big impact on her children who watched on TV in real time the end of the most important symbol of NYC.
Someone once said: if you lose the way, don't worry, look at the Twin Towers and you'll know where you are. Once, no one knew where they were, and where the way was, because, simply their compass was gone.
It's interesting what Lucy says about writing and her family. She refused of visiting her family for writing more, giving more space to her career, because she didn't have a great relationship with the members of her family, all cold with her. At the same time, she adds that she wouldn't never have written in a certain way the books she wrote if she would have shared her time with her family, influenced by their vibes.
I found this book at the second-hand store Books for Dogs located in Umbertide. Great quality-books.
Anna Maria Polidori
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