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

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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 - Penguin Books Australia Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout - Penguin Books Australia

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? 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. It’s early March and Lucy Barton’s ex-husband, William – she’s still fond of him but they have lived apart for as long as they were married – calls to say he wants to get her out of New York. They’ll go to a friend’s empty beach house in Maine “just for a few weeks”, he assures her. He urges her to cancel all her appointments and bring her computer. “Everyone is going to be working from home soon,” he says, not least their two adult daughters – and he admits he’s “begged” them to leave the city as well. Elizabeth Strout does it again, walking us through what the pandemic meant to those who could protect themselves early on. As always, the characters feel like someone I might actually know. 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 TimesLucy By the Sea is another Barton installment that confronts the deep and familiar tangles of intimate relationships . . . Through this complex and isolating time, Lucy plumbs the nuances of human connection TIME Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over. I think Lucy is a little too protective of her daughters. Becca once she leaves her philandering husband grows up a lot and wants to carefully change her relationship with her mother. - linnie You may change or cancel your subscription or trial at any time online. Simply log into Settings & Account and select "Cancel" on the right-hand side. 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.

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

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. My concern with this book was to get the pacing right, because time felt altered during the pandemic, and this is essential to catch, and also to have things happen, because a lot did not happen during this time. But it turned out there were all sorts of things to occupy Lucy and William…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. 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. You would be forgiven for avoiding any pandemic-set novels for the rest of the decade, but it's worth making an exception for Elizabeth Strout's Lucy By The Sea Vogue, Best New Books for Autumn Reflective. Melancholy. Hopeful. Insightful. How would you describe the tone of Lucy by the Sea, and why?