Will I love Amy and Isabelle?

I was once in line to get a book signed by Elizabeth Strout, and the minute I opened my mouth to greet her, I burst into tears. That’s how much I loved this book.

I loved Amy, the mother, and how hard she was trying to parent her teenage daughter, Isabelle. And Isabelle, who is trying to figure out her place in the world ends up having an affair with her teacher. But what I love the most is how much I felt bad for both Isabelle, who is trying to sort out her feelings for her teacher and herself,… show more.

In this exceptional story that I’ve read twice, Elizabeth Strout places a seemingly ordinary, though distant, mother and her shy teenage daughter in the provincial town of Shirley Falls, Maine, to create a stunning awakening in the daughter Amy and foster the admission of a long-hidden secret by Amy’s mother Isabelle. As much as Amy thinks her development is about her sexuality, it is more about forming a relationship with her lonely mother. After Amy learns her mother’s story, she learns her most important moment of identity has not been sexual initiation, but her self-acceptance. The relationship between mother and… show more.

Elizabeth Strout’s debut novel is a dual coming-of-age novel, at least in my view. Single mother Isabelle and her sixteen-year-old daughter Amy live in the small, gossipy New England mill town of Shirley Falls. It’s the late ‘60s, and Isabelle is determined to raise her daughter right and live a proper life. But Amy falls in love with the wrong guy. As teenage Amy rebels against Isabelle’s strictures, and as Isabelle tries to ferret out what Amy’s been up to, they move through a rough summer, and both are changed as they begin to understand themselves, and one another, differently.… show more.