Lucy by the Sea is the fourth in Strout’s Amgash series, novels where Lucy Barton features as narrator and protagonist (though the second book, Anything Is Possible, is a collection of loosely interlinked stories in which she takes a chorus role). 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

Her novels are comprised of realistic details and the everyday events of a cast of interconnected characters, in narratives that can read brilliantly simple, while simultaneously juggling multiple timeframes and strands that move backwards, forwards and sideways in a remarkable rendition of life. The hallmark of her writing is its elucidation of ordinary lives. They are often quite difficult to sum up in a single sentence. This is Lucy Barton, the writer/narrator of Elizabeth Strout’s new novel, in typical observational form, noticing the artificiality of a media interview, the way something other than the subject of life itself is deemed necessary in order to make a story of interest.Įlizabeth Strout’s oeuvre is the very opposite of hook-driven. And the fact that the station was always looking for what was called ‘a hook’.” “This is the way of life,” Lucy says: “the many things we do not know until it is too late.“I had been struck by that increasingly over the years: that when I did a television show, how there was always something slightly false about it, the perkiness of the newscasters, the setting, the whole thing. On every page of this exquisite novel we learn more about the quiet forces that hold us together-even after we’ve grown apart.Īt the heart of this story is the indomitable voice of Lucy Barton, who offers a profound, lasting reflection on the very nature of existence. What happens next is nothing less than another example of what Hilary Mantel has called Elizabeth Strout’s “perfect attunement to the human condition.” There are fears and insecurities, simple joys and acts of tenderness, and revelations about affairs and other spouses, parents and their children. So Lucy is both surprised and not surprised when William asks her to join him on a trip to investigate a recently uncovered family secret- one of those secrets that rearrange everything we think we know about the people closest to us. Another mystery is why the two have remained connected after all these years. William, she confesses, has always been a mystery to me. Lucy Barton is a writer, but her ex-husband, William, remains a hard man to read.

Lucy barton series order