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“[Strout] illuminates both what people understand about others and what they understand about themselves.”
— New York Times Book Review
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“[An] absolute tour de force from award-winning author Elizabeth Strout. Strout tackles the human condition, and deftly describes the tethers that hold us to the special people in our lives. Not to be missed.”
— Barnes&Noble.com
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“Oh William! may well be my favorite of [Strout’s] books…The depth, complexity, and love contained in these pages is a miraculous achievement.”
— Ann Patchett, #1 New York Times bestselling author
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One proof of Strout’s greatness is the sleight of hand with which she injects sneaky subterranean power into seemingly transparent prose. Strout works in the realm of everyday speech, conjuring repetitions, gaps and awkwardness with plain language and forthright diction, yet at the same time unleashing a tidal urgency that seems to come out of nowhere even as it operates in plain sight.
— The New York Times Book Review
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So much intimate, fragile, desperate humanness infuses these pages, it’s breathtaking. Almost every declaration carries the force of revelation.
— The Washington Post
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For all the depths of anger and despair they uncover, and the bitterness they attest to, Strout’s works insist on the su- perabundance of life, the unrealized bliss always immanent in it.
— The New York Review of Books
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Being privy to the innermost thoughts of Lucy Barton—and, more to the point, deep inside a book by Strout—makes readers feel safe. We know we’re in good hands.
— NPR
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Strout doesn’t dress language up in a tuxedo when a wool sweater will suffice. Other novelists must berate themselves when they see what Strout pulls off without any tacky pyrotechnics.
— Los Angeles Times
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The miraculous quality of Strout’s fiction is the way she opens up depths with the simplest of touches, and this novel ends with the assurance that the source of love lies less in understanding than in recognition—although it may take a lifetime to learn the difference.
— The Guardian
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At the core of . . . Strout’s best-selling fiction are characters grappling with huge questions about love, loss and family through seemingly ordinary moments. The domestic dramas that fill her books lead to startling revelations about the complexities that accompany marriage, parenthood and growing old. Her new novel is no exception.
— Time
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[Strout] invests us deeply in Lucy’s epiphany: Even though we are fueled by presumptions and believe what we want to believe, the truth is always within our sight.
— Star Tribune
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[Oh William!] serves as a gentle reminder to be emotionally generous with our loved ones and as physically present as possible each and every day of our lives.
— San Francisco Chronicle
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Keenly observed and rich with illuminating insight, Strout’s tender mercies continue to astound.
— Esquire
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The Pulitzer Prize–winning [Oprah’s Book Club] author reprises her literary avatar, Lucy Barton, in this radiant—if melancholy—contemplation of marriage, mortality, and love’s complexities.
— Oprah Daily