My Name is Lucy Barton is a novel by Elizabeth Strout, first published in 2016. It centers around Lucy Barton, a woman who lives in New York; about her childhood living in poverty, her rocky relationship with her parents, her marriage, and more.

This book is really short and very often jumps around through different time periods of Lucy's life. I find it really easy to lose track of the story sometimes. The title character Lucy is obviously the most engaging part of this story. Her vulnerabilities and difficulties in her life with her friends and family felt so real and honest, and surely most of us can relate to.

Although the absence of a single plot that drives the story sometimes makes the story quite boring, there's a lot of life lessons that you can pick from it. And that's probably what the author is trying to do here. Proving the idea that there's always another way to look at life, even if it is something as simple as an ordinary person recollecting her ordinary life story.