Book description
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.
“No novelist working today has Strout’s extraordinary capacity…
Why read it?
4 authors picked Lucy by the Sea as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
My favorite book I read this year was Lucy by the Sea, by Elizabeth Strout. I've enjoyed all of Strout's books about Lucy Barton, of which this is the fourth. In this pandemic-era novel, Lucy's sometimes-overbearing ex-husband, William, demands that she leave New York City as Covid hits, and come with him to a seaside town in Maine to wait things out. The relationship between Lucy and William is depicted with humor and sensitivity, and Strout does an amazing job of recreating 2020, with all its fears and frustrations and horror. I also enjoy the way Strout brings characters back…
The best Strout I've read, spare, seemingly simple but such undercurrents of clever complexity and humour.
Elizabeth Strout is perfecting a practice I’m sold on–the literary recasting of characters from one novel to the next.
In this book, I got to return to Lucy Barton and her ex-husband, William, who were thrown together in a cabin in Maine due to the pandemic. Writing the novel from the first-person perspective of the protagonist, Strout includes this pragmatic character’s interior musings, specifically the things we increasingly noticed as time slowed down during COVID.
I could so relate to Lucy’s quirky character: give me ornery, critical, and desperate any day! Weren’t we all?
From Jeanne's list on books that utilize COVID in the plot.
If you love Lucy by the Sea...
The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More
The coastal tourist town of Great Wharf, Maine, boasts a crime rate so low you might suspect someone’s lying.
Nevertheless, jobless empty nester Mallory Cooper has become increasingly reclusive and fearful. Careful to keep the red wine handy and loath to leave the house, Mallory misses her happier self—and so…
Lucy and her ex, William, leave New York for a seaside house in Maine at the start of the pandemic.
Not much happens and a lot happens, which is Strout’s singular gift, to infuse the everyday with meaning. She touches on everything—slow dawning fears of the pandemic, missing her daughters, the murder of George Floyd and subsequent riots, the storming of the Capitol, her confusion about rekindling love with William.
I could relate to all of it, and I especially loved the reminder to embrace the life you’ve been given.
From Pamela's list on mature, smart, resilient, and life-embracing women.
If you love Lucy by the Sea...
The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More
The coastal tourist town of Great Wharf, Maine, boasts a crime rate so low you might suspect someone’s lying.
Nevertheless, jobless empty nester Mallory Cooper has become increasingly reclusive and fearful. Careful to keep the red wine handy and loath to leave the house, Mallory misses her happier self—and so…
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