Pulitzer Prize winner Strout revisits the eponymous heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton, exploring the ties that bind her to her first husband, William. From courtship, the novel moves to their marriage, the birth of their daughters, eviscerating marital collapse, new marriage for each, and finally the confidences and closeness they sometimes share in later years.

Pulitzer Prize winner Strout creates characters so developed, so human and flawed, that readers might feel frustrated with them, as one would with a friend or family member. First seen in My Name Is Lucy Barton, the protagonist here is a successful author, though one would never know it from her demeanor. Lucy considers herself invisible despite being well known for her writings, which include a memoir about her difficult upbringing. Lucy often refers to parts of her life that she's covered in past books, but readers don't have access to them, only Lucy's current observations. Lucy is recently widowed, having lost her second husband, David, the man she found later in life after a lengthy marriage and two children with the titular William. David was her true love, the family she chose for herself, yet she agrees to accompany William on an exploration of his past, whether from old feelings or a sense of obligation. As Lucy and William travel from New York to Maine, readers learn about their marriage, daughters, and dynamic. VERDICT A fine examination of relationships that asks how well one can know someone, even after years together, but it's sometimes hard to connect to the narrative. William is rather awful, which might leave readers wondering why so many women's lives revolve around such men. Perhaps that is Strout's point.—Shaunna E. Hunter, Hampden-Sydney Coll., VA

Loneliness and betrayal, themes to which the Pulitzer Prize–winning Strout has returned throughout her career, are ever present in this illuminating character-driven saga, the third in her Amgash series, after Anything Is Possible. Narrated by Lucy Barton, now a successful writer, the story picks up after the death of Lucy's second husband as she navigates her relationship with her unfaithful first husband, William, the father of her two grown daughters. Lucy and William are still close friends, and though William has also remarried, he still needs Lucy, and she him. When William discovers he has a half sister, he summons Lucy, rather than his current wife, to visit where she lives in Maine. Lucy's quest—indeed Strout's quest—is to understand people, even if she can't stand them. "We are all mythologies, mysterious. We are all mysteries, is what I mean," she reflects. The strength of Lucy's voice carries the reader, and Strout's characters teem with angst and emotion, all of which Strout handles with a mastery of restraint and often in spare, true sentences. "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." It's not for nothing that Strout has been compared to Hemingway. In some ways, she betters him. Agent: Molly Friedrich, Friedrich Agency. (Oct.)