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

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Strout captures the minutiae of recent years with insight and compassion iNews, 40 Best Books to Read This Autumn 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. Graceful, deceptively light... Lucy’s done the hard work of transformation. May we do the same.” — The New York Times

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout: 9780593446089

At the start of the novel, Lucy doesn't understand William's concern about getting out of New York City. Could you understand Lucy's ambivalence? How did you process the early days of the pandemic?

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Written in Lucy's first-person voice, this ingenious novel reminds me of two friends conversing about the details of their day. It is filled with both joy and sorrow, and at times it is brutally raw with human emotion. The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother. 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.

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout — courage through stormy Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout — courage through stormy

Strout] has that rare ability to immerse readers in the world of her characters . . . m oments of quiet revelation - infidelities, or glimpses into the indignities of incontinence and cancer - feel poignant and real, but also unsentimental. It is a compassionate, life-affirming read, and a much-needed balm for these trying times Straits TimesHeartwarming 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 — Elizabeth Strout Lucy by the Sea — Elizabeth Strout

Reflective. Melancholy. Hopeful. Insightful. How would you describe the tone of Lucy by the Sea, and why? 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. Strout writes in a conversational voice, evoking those early weeks and months of the pandemic with immediacy and candor. These halting rhythms resonate . . . Rendered in Strout's graceful, deceptively light prose New York Times Book Review

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William is my first husband; we were married for twenty years and we have been divorced for about that long as well. We are friendly, I would see him intermittently; we both were living in New York City, where we came when we first married. But because my (second) husband had died and his (third) wife had left him, I had seen him more this past year. Poised and moving . . . It is only in the steady hands of Strout, whose prose has an uncanny, plainspoken elegance, that you will want to relive those early months of wiping down groceries and social isolation . . . This is a slim, beautifully controlled book that bursts with emotion Vogue 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.”