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? An unflinching depiction of the ways we are all alone . . . Strout's most distinctive skill - the ability to render every character, big or small, with precision - is on full display . . . Lucy finds love oin the novel, but Strout never looks away from the loneliness that is inherent in being human: "We all live with people - and places - and things that we have given great weight to. But we are all weightless in the end." Sarah Collins, Prospect Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over. The heart and soul of the story is how Lucy and William adjust to the isolation, make new friends, and discover new things about themselves as individuals and each other as a couple. In addition to dealing with grief for those close to them who die of Covid, Lucy wrestles with being the mother to grown-up daughters who don't particularly need her, as well as horrifying memories of her terrible, abusive childhood.

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout | Waterstones

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. 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?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.

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 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. 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 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 SmithMost 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. 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. It's no secret that Elizabeth Strout is a stunning writer, but I still find myself amazed at the depth she brings to the world of her stories centered on Lucy Barton Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Week Could you understand Lucy's ambivalence to leaving New York City? How did you process the early days of the pandemic? Stunningly universal . . . with brilliant acuity, Strout has seized on the parallels between Lucy Barton's pervasive sense of alienation and the way the recent global crisis has exposed the helplessness felt by ordinary people everywhere Daily Telegraph, 5 stars

Lucy By the Sea by Elizabeth Strout review - The Guardian

This novel resonates with wisdom, insights, and a deep, almost visceral, understanding of what it means to be fully human. Reading this book is the literary equivalent of a soft, comfortable blanket. It will make you feel warm and good all over, knowing that even though we all felt so alone and lonely at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, we are not alone and lonely. We still have each other. And we still have Lucy Barton. 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. There is an insistent generosity in Strout's books, and a restraint that obscures the complexity of their construction Washington Post

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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 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 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] 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 Times A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism.

Lucy by the Sea, by Elizabeth Strout: A novel that makes Lucy by the Sea, by Elizabeth Strout: A novel that makes

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 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. I really did understand. In the start of things, we knew it was bad, and I had found the story about the small Italian town that was completely decimated by it early on. But what we didn't know was 'how long will this go on"? ... - pnelson384 Not the kind of deep, resonant fiction we expect from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Olive Kitteridge.

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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. 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