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 may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. Heartwarming 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 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

Lucy By the Sea by Elizabeth Strout review - The Guardian

Strout captures the minutiae of recent years with insight and compassion iNews, 40 Best Books to Read This AutumnStrout's] novels, intricately and painstakingly crafted, overlap and intertwine to create an instantly recognizable fictional landscape . . . you don't so much read a Strout novel as inhabit it Guardian And Strout is similarly astute on the eternal compromises of love, marriage and ex-marriage. Finding herself in such sudden and perpetual close proximity with the man who was once her husband, Lucy sometimes finds she cannot stand him. William isn’t as emotionally available as the male neighbour she takes walks with, William doesn’t like watching her floss her teeth, and, she now recalls, William “does not like to hear anything negative”. But he is, she admits, often able to get through to their daughters in ways she cannot. 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. 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.

Book Review: “Lucy by the Sea,” by Elizabeth Strout - The New

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. The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.Rich with empathy and a searing clarity, Lucy by the Sea evokes the fragility and uncertainty of the recent past, as well as the possibilities that those long, quiet days can inspire. At the heart of this miraculous novel are the deep human connections that sustain us, even as the world seems to be falling apart. 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. Strout managed to make me love this strange woman I’d never met, who I knew nothing about. What a terrific writer she is.” —Zadie Smith 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: A novel that makes Lucy by the Sea, by Elizabeth Strout: A novel that makes

I really liked and enjoyed reading Lucy By The Sea. Not at all complicated and was easy reading. Lucy was a bit manipulative but managed to get what she wanted. I personally think the author took Covid too far....I guess there would not be a story if she did otherwise. William was a little off-putting but still I liked his character, I do like the way the author phrases....to the point and short paragraphs. Now I will read O William and get a better handle on who William is. 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? Lucy by the Sea has an anecdotal surface that belies a firm underlying structure. It is meant to feel like life—random, surprising, occasionally lit with flashes of larger meaning—but it is art.” — The New Yorker 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. Scott Shane's outstanding work Flee North tells the little-known tale of an unlikely partnership ...Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? Three woman who join together to rent a large space along the beach in Los Angeles for their stores—a gift shop, a bakery, and a bookstore—become fast friends as they each experience the highs, and lows, of love. 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? There is an insistent generosity in Strout's books, and a restraint that obscures the complexity of their construction Washington Post

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

No novelist working today has Strout’s extraordinary capacity for radical empathy, for seeing the essence of people beyond reductive categories, for uniting us without sentimentality.I didn’t just love Lucy by the Sea; I needed it.May droves of readers come to feel enlarged, comforted, and genuinely uplifted by Lucy’s story.” — The Boston Globe No novelist working today has Strout's extraordinary capacity for radical empathy, for seeing the essence of people beyond reductive categories, for uniting us without sentimentality. I didn't just love Lucy by the Sea; I needed it. May droves of readers come to feel enlarged, comforted, and genuinely uplifted by Lucy's story." — The Boston Globe During her adolescent years, Strout continued writing avidly, having conceived of herself as a writer from early on. She read biographies of writers, ... If, like me, you find you’re “over Covid”, to the extent that you’ve no interest in reading a fictional retelling, this book will change your mind I feel like I might have a better answer to this if this wasn't my first book about Lucy, but I do feel like the author gave me enough history to be able to understand the book I was reading. Lucy mourns her brother, and his life from such ... - pnelson384Inspired by the true events surrounding the destruction of the town, Iola, in the 1960’s, this story tells of hardship, loss, courage and resilience. Story begins on a small peach ranch in Iola, Colorado. The Gunnison River is damned, the town is flooded, and a reservoir built. Prior to this, Victoria, 17, encounters young Wilson Moon, by chance and falls for him. She gets pregnant and tragedy strikes. She isolates herself in a small hut in the mountains, where she struggles in the wilderness. Alone, she has the baby and gives him up to a young woman who, by chance is stopped in the woods with a newborn baby of her own. Character development superb and the writer is truly gifted. Example- “my insides were tumbling like pebbles in a stream.” She is able to describe the beautiful, harsh landscape so that you feel that you are there. A must read! If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. 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. 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 Graceful, deceptively light... Lucy’s done the hard work of transformation. May we do the same.” — The New York Times