Lucy by the Sea: From the Booker-shortlisted author of Oh William!

Product Information

I feel like I might have a better answer to this if this wasn't my first book about Lucy, but I do feel like the author gave me enough history to be able to understand the book I was reading. Lucy mourns her brother, and his life from such ... - pnelson384 This novel resonates with wisdom, insights, and a deep, almost visceral, understanding of what it means to be fully human. Reading this book is the literary equivalent of a soft, comfortable blanket. It will make you feel warm and good all over, knowing that even though we all felt so alone and lonely at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, we are not alone and lonely. We still have each other. And we still have Lucy Barton. On being separated from her two adult daughters in difficult times: “I was aware that I felt a slight sense of remove from both the girls, and I understood this was because their sadness affected me too much.” On the creative lethargy of the pandemic: “About my work I thought: I will never write another word again.” On the intense emotions brought on by living in confinement with people, related here with a trademark dart of humour: “I should say this: It was during this time that I noticed that I hated William each night after dinner.” Graceful, deceptively light... Lucy’s done the hard work of transformation. May we do the same.” — The New York Times The book begins with Lucy’s scientist ex-husband, William, convincing her to leave New York as the pandemic takes hold of the city. They flee to a coastal house in Maine, rented from his friend Bob Burgess. Lucy views the trip as short-term, but the weeks turn into years. What follows is a retrospective narrative of sorts, told in short, vignette-style sections that show the isolation, connections, small surprises and inevitable losses of the pandemic.

Lucy by the Sea: From the Booker-shortlisted author of Oh

An unflinching depiction of the ways we are all alone . . . Strout's most distinctive skill - the ability to render every character, big or small, with precision - is on full display . . . Lucy finds love oin the novel, but Strout never looks away from the loneliness that is inherent in being human: "We all live with people - and places - and things that we have given great weight to. But we are all weightless in the end." Sarah Collins, Prospect Elizabeth Strout paints with a fine brush on a small canvas. Like the works of Alice Munro, Strout’s novels are portraits of unremarkable, profoundly human lives. Her interest is in the local and the particular. From her debut Amy and Isabelle (1998) to her Pulitzer Prize-winner Olive Kitteridge (2008), Strout depicts a world of interconnected individuals, most of whom reside in small-town Maine.Strout captures the minutiae of recent years with insight and compassion iNews, 40 Best Books to Read This Autumn No novelist working today has Strout's extraordinary capacity for radical empathy, for seeing the essence of people beyond reductive categories, for uniting us without sentimentality. I didn't just love Lucy by the Sea; I needed it. May droves of readers come to feel enlarged, comforted, and genuinely uplifted by Lucy's story." — The Boston Globe

LUCY BY THE SEA | Kirkus Reviews LUCY BY THE SEA | Kirkus Reviews

William takes command when he sees the pandemic coming. He rents a house on the coast of Maine and hurries Lucy out of her beloved New York. “Maybe just a few weeks,” he lies, firmly putting her computer in the car while she insists that for this brief spell she’ll only need an iPad. “What are those?” Lucy asks in disbelief, seeing his plastic gloves for use at the petrol pump. “Don’t worry about it,” he repeats, and this is how they go on. William continues uncommunicatively in his self-appointed task of saving Lucy’s life. Lucy goes where she is put, resisting engagement in a way that is hard to fathom until we understand how deeply it is connected with grief for her second husband, and separation from the city they shared.

Most of all – because it’s no spoiler to say that this is a love story – he is simply incapable of being anything but generous to her, even if it’s a generosity that Lucy finds herself unable to accept without “a shiver of foreboding”. He admits: “Yours is the life I wanted to save,” when explaining why he took her out of New York. “We all live with people – and places – and things – that we have given great weight to,” Lucy thinks. “But we are all weightless, in the end.” Maybe so, but I’m not sure I’ve ever read a novel that better explains why that, probably, is enough. There is also repetition in theme, across a variety of characters: poverty, loss, loneliness, food issues, infidelity, and the vitality of nature, the value of connection, which is at the heart of Strout’s writing.

Lucy by the Sea, by Elizabeth Strout: A novel that makes Lucy by the Sea, by Elizabeth Strout: A novel that makes

Discuss Lucy's relationship with her ex-husband, William. Why do you think they have remained in each other's lives for so long? Were you satisfied with how they ended up? Lucy by the Sea holds a mirror up to everything we have been through recently. Not only reflecting disbelief, isolation and how different and at the same time similar we are to each other, but also what happens to human relationships when we can't be together. Superb Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground

No novelist working today has Strout’s extraordinary capacity for radical empathy, for seeing the essence of people beyond reductive categories, for uniting us without sentimentality.I didn’t just love Lucy by the Sea; I needed it.May droves of readers come to feel enlarged, comforted, and genuinely uplifted by Lucy’s story.” — The Boston Globe Heartwarming as well as somber . . . Strout's new novel manages, like her others, to encompass love and friendship, joy and anxiety, grief and grievances, loneliness and shame - and a troubling sense of growing unrest and division in America . . . Strout's understanding of the human condition is capacious NPR Lucy by the Sea has an anecdotal surface that belies a firm underlying structure. It is meant to feel like life—random, surprising, occasionally lit with flashes of larger meaning—but it is art.” — The New Yorker Lucy by the Sea has an anecdotal surface that belies a firm underlying structure. It is meant to feel like life—random, surprising, occasionally lit with flashes of larger meaning—but it is art." — The New Yorker You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.

Lucy by the Sea - Harvard Review

Lucy by the Sea makes the pandemic personal. Collective grief for the pandemic’s toll brushes against more private tragedies: infidelity, miscarriage, impotence, widowhood. The novel is about the difficulty of feeling like a person during a global pandemic—indeed, the difficulty of feeling anything at all. A “dazed,” “fuzzy” Lucy looks away while William watches the evening news. Concerned that “my mind was not quite right,” she confesses: “I could not read. I could not concentrate.” While in earlier novels Lucy’s defining characteristic is her willingness to plumb her own depths, here Lucy loses faith in the value of self-knowledge through storytelling. “About my work I thought: I will never write another word again,” she says. As if crushed by the weight of a moment that promises to be historic, Lucy questions how—and whether—to relate the particular to the general. A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. There is an insistent generosity in Strout's books, and a restraint that obscures the complexity of their construction Washington PostRich with empathy and emotion, Lucy by the Sea vividly captures the fear and struggles that come with isolation, as well as the hope, peace, and possibilities that those long, quiet days can inspire. At the heart of this story are the deep human connections that unite us even when we're apart—the pain of a beloved daughter's suffering, the emptiness that comes from the death of a loved one, the promise of a new friendship, and the comfort of an old, enduring love. Rich with empathy and a searing clarity, Lucy by the Sea evokes the fragility and uncertainty of the recent past, as well as the possibilities that those long, quiet days can inspire. At the heart of this miraculous novel are the deep human connections that sustain us, even as the world seems to be falling apart. Could you understand Lucy's ambivalence to leaving New York City? How did you process the early days of the pandemic? ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Oprah Daily, Entertainment Weekly, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Time, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, PopSugar, She Reads