Lucy by the Sea: A Novel
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout comes a poignant, pitch-perfect novel about a divorced couple stuck together during lockdown--and the love, loss, despair, and hope that animate us even as the world seems to be falling apart. "Strout's understanding of the human condition is capacious."--NPR
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 With her trademark spare, crystalline prose--a voice infused with "intimate, fragile, desperate humanness" (The Washington Post)--Elizabeth Strout turns her exquisitely tuned eye to the inner workings of the human heart, following the indomitable heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton through the early days of the pandemic. As a panicked world goes into lockdown, Lucy Barton is uprooted from her life in Manhattan and bundled away to a small town in Maine by her ex-husband and on-again, off-again friend, William. For the next several months, it's just Lucy, William, and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the moody, swirling sea. Rich 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. Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize
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 With her trademark spare, crystalline prose--a voice infused with "intimate, fragile, desperate humanness" (The Washington Post)--Elizabeth Strout turns her exquisitely tuned eye to the inner workings of the human heart, following the indomitable heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton through the early days of the pandemic. As a panicked world goes into lockdown, Lucy Barton is uprooted from her life in Manhattan and bundled away to a small town in Maine by her ex-husband and on-again, off-again friend, William. For the next several months, it's just Lucy, William, and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the moody, swirling sea. Rich 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. Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize
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Community Reviews
Meh. I was hesitant to read a book about the COVID pandemic. It was pleasantly ok. Not amazing or exciting at all but ok. Easy to follow along but never any real climax.
New York Times bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout brings back Lucy Barton, the enduring character she introduced in My Name is Lucy Barton. She appeared again in Anything Is Possible and Oh William!, the book she had barely completed when the COVID-19 pandemic began. “Lucy and William were just so much in my head. I thought: OK, let’s have him take her up to the coast of Maine, and stick them on this cliff and see what...read more
I found the main character unsympathetic, primarily because I could not establish a connection between her supposedly rough upbringing and the seemingly hapless adult she had become. In hindsight that disconnect becomes more interesting, and was perhaps intentional on the part of the author. I didn’t know it was part of a larger series, and it’s likely that some of the questions I had would be illuminated in reading more of them.
Lucy is an unsympathetic character. She is anxious, needy, self-centered, dependent … yet I am repeatedly drawn to her story. This was an uncomfortable read, forcing a reactivation of my own pandemic experiences, but I couldn’t put it down. Lucy and the people she loves are flawed but forgivable, just like us.
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