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The Booker Prize: 2022

 Elizabeth Strout gets linked with Hemingway; both writers use the white space to say things that words can't say. Famously, Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" looks at abortion from several angles--and yet the word "abortion" never appears in the text. In Strout's "Oh William," two people burdened by grief are on a trip together; although grief rarely gets named or addressed, it's lurking in every scene.


Strout may win the Booker Prize within the next few weeks. Until her forties, she had never published a novel. Now, in her sixties, she publishes a new book every year. We're talking about five years in a row.

"Oh William" has a narrator, Lucy Barton, whose husband has died. In mourning, Lucy hears from an *earlier* husband, William. William can be a chore; he wears his khakis too short, and he is palpably insecure about his job. Also, he has a slight mean streak; he finds exactly the right way to embarrass Lucy, then he zooms in on his target. (Lucy, a success story with humble origins, feels really moved by any kind of luxury, and she is known to kiss tulips at dinner parties. William knows a reminder of this will take Lucy back to her mortifying, painful childhood--so, in a bad moment, he says, "Do you remember when you kissed the tulips at your party? So weird....Not that it was a real dinner party.....You wouldn't be *capable* of hosting a real dinner party....")

Lucy, a poet, feels stunned by the world around her. She finds herself shopping in a New York boutique next to a woman who has badly wounded William. Although Lucy wants to scold this woman, she discovers herself saying, "Do what you need to do. You don't need to worry about the rest of us." The woman turns to Lucy and says, "Thank you. Everyone focuses on the person who is abandoned. No one knows that the person who *leaves* the marriage is hurting, too...." Lucy is touched by this exchange--but, days later, she sees her confidant talking in an animated way with an older man, and a wave of hatred comes rushing back. "We are all mysteries to one another."

People say "books about loneliness can sometimes make you feel less alone." That's the impact "Oh William" had on me. An odd, truthful story about living in New York in the years after 9/11. I don't know if it's headed toward a Booker, but I wouldn't mind that outcome.
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