Dear Great Book Guru,  I am looking forward to the Sea Cliff Civic Association’s Meet the Candidates this Tuesday, March 8 at 8pm in Village Hall. The Trustee candidates get to talk about their dreams for Sea Cliff and the audience gets to quiz them about specific issues.  While I am waiting for the event to begin, I always like to have a good book on hand.  Any suggestions?                   Fan of Village Politics

Dear Fan of Village Politics,  I just read a very good, very short novel: MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON by Eiizabeth Strout.  Strout is the author of the Pulitzer Prize winning OLIVE KITTERIDGE.  This latest work  is a series of short chapters in which the narrator Lucy  Barton recounts moments in her life from early childhood to late middle age with the longest section of the book focusing on a few weeks when, as a young mother and wife, she was hospitalized  following a complicated appendectomy. In and out of a dreamy consciousness, she awakens to find her mother, whom she has not seen  for many years, sitting across from her.   Over the weeks, she tells Lucy about friends and neighbors from their small rural town. Strangely, all these stories are about unhappy women and disastrous marriages.  What are they meant to convey- what can this mother and child not say to one another?  We gradually come to realize Lucy’s life has been very, very hard… far harder than even Lucy realizes.  Highly recommended!