When we realize that some of his torment, anyway, came from living with an act of barbarism he committed in the war, the pain makes him seem human, even though his response to his own trauma traumatized his family. But she does remember a tender gesture ('the feel of his warm hand spread against the back of my head' as he carried her young self) and a moment when he was generous in a way that any father would want to be with a child. 'My Name Is Lucy Barton' is partly about imperfect love - by parents, by spouses, by children - and about the salving goodness that so often and incongruously coexists with a person's toxic badness.īeyond recalling a couple of lacerating scenes of neglect and emotional brutality, Lucy can barely bring herself to tell us what so terrified her about her father's behavior. Imperfectly,' a famous writer later says to Lucy, who has given her some bits of the hospital memories to read. 'This is a story about a mother who loves her daughter. And so her presence assuages her child's isolation and fear. Lucy's mother, who sits and sleeps in a nearby chair, catches her up on old gossip, mainly about marriages that have been dented and sometimes destroyed. For days, they chat instead of their hometown in farm country, where Lucy left her parents long ago. To Lucy's father, William looked unsettlingly like the people he'd fought against in World War II.īut when her mother arrives in her hospital room, as if answering Lucy's primal longing to be soothed and taken care of, all of that is unspoken. Neither had her choice of spouse, the son of a German immigrant.

This hadn't gone over well with her family.

My name is lucy barton synopsis