My Name Is Lucy Barton (by Elizabeth Strout)

I've been reading two ToB books simultaneously, this one and Version Control.  This was the one I've had to put on my to-do list every day to get through; Version Control has been my fun reward book.  Not that Lucy Barton is at all long, or in any way bad. But being in Lucy's world is being seeped in melancholy. 

The plot of the novel, such as it is, is that Lucy is in the hospital, being visited by her mother and reminiscing. We see flashes of her painful childhood, marked by extreme poverty and abuse, and her own deep emotional damage as a result.  Yet it's written in an understated, spare, meditative way.  Lucy and Lucy (both the character and the book itself) wring your heart as you read.

Let me put it this way: Version Control includes the death of a child and is way less depressing.  These two books are going head-to-head in the first round of the ToB. I can't wait to see how that turns out; when I finish Version Control, I'll let you know how I would vote.