Dear Fellow Reader,

An hour ago, I was in the basement waiting for the National Weather Service to cancel the tornado warning that it issued for my area. And now I sit here, and the sun is shining. I can see a bit of blue sky between the white clouds. You just never know what the day will bring.

I read a book by Elizabeth Strout for a book club a couple of years ago. It was My Name is Lucy Barton and I don’t remember much about it but it was dark. I know there were scenes between a mother and daughter in a hospital that truly showed a terrible relationship.

So, now I have read Lucy by the Sea. I think that Elizabeth Strout’s writing style is very different. It is brief and to the point. The chapters contain many sections with each section running either from a couple of sentences to a few paragraphs. The breaks allow for a change in thought or movement of the plot. While at first, I wasn’t too wild about it, I think it is very effective. The breaks allow Lucy to allude that something is going to happen in the future and then she goes back to the present or the past. It is not confusing at all as to where you are in the story even with the breaks.

Lucy is living in New York as she always has. She is still in mourning for her husband, Dwight, who died about a year ago. She loved him with all her heart. She has an ex-husband that she is friendly with and since Dwight's death, she will occasionally travel with him. Their relationship is platonic but they have a long history. Her ex-husband is a parasitologist. He sees that there is going to be a huge change coming and he tells Lucy and his daughters that they need to leave the city. One daughter and her husband take his advice and move into the husband’s parent’s home while the parents are wintering in Florida. William tells Lucy to get ready that he is going to pick her up and they are leaving the city. Lucy doesn’t really understand what William is talking about but he is so insistent that she packs a bag and leaves with him for Maine.

And then the pandemic hits and some of their friends die.

The story is about that time. They are in Maine and they are not welcomed in Maine. They live in relative isolation out on a cliff and spend time taking separate walks around the area. It is the story of what Lucy expects to be a few weeks in Maine then turns into a much longer time. We learn more about the relationship between Lucy and William (and what went wrong) and how their relationship with their daughters. Lucy’s relationship with her dead mother also plays a big part in the story.

The reader learns the story of Lucy with all its warts and beauty.

If you are ready to read about the pandemic and its effects, then this is an interesting read. Is it too soon after the pandemic? Depends on the person, I guess. I truly enjoyed the writing style and the very human characters. I think you should read it.

Thanks for reading!

As always, Strout has written a beautiful novel full of love and empathy. Set as the pandemic takes hold, Lucy Barton’s former husband, whisks her out of NY to a small town in Maine. He recognizes what is about to happen. The novel portrays loneliness and isolation like no other novel I’ve read on the topic.

Whew! I've been saved. After a couple of rather crap readings, this popped into my reading list and it was a total joy. I've read Elizabeth Strout previously, so knew I was in for a treat with this book, and indeed I was.

This book more-or-less takes up after <cite>Oh William!</cite>. Lucy and her first ex-husband, William, are back in New York City again, after having gone to Maine together a few months previously to <em>find</em> William's previously unknown and unsuspected half sister, Lois Bubar.

Once back in New York, they sometimes get together and sometimes not. But, it's early in 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic is ramping up. William is a biological scientist and he understands, sooner than most, the dangers posed by the virus. So, he contrives to move himself and Lucy up to Maine to get away from the city and away from most of the initial dangers of the virus. Basically, they're up there in lockdown. They don't much interact with other people and don't much get out. I remember it all well, except I didn't have Maine for my escape.

Over time, they get to know a few locals a little bit. One such is a cleaning lady, Charlene Bibber, who works at a place called Maple Tree Apts. Interestingly, one of the people living there is Olive Kitredge. So we get a nice update on Olive, whom we've met, and learned to love, in some previous Strout books.

They also have to run a rescue operation to protect their daughters, Chrissy and Becka, who live in New York. They run into a guy named Bob Burgess, with whose ex-wife William had an affair. And some other adventures.

This is all told in Strout's lovely, conversational style. This is certainly a <em>Good Read</em> all around. I would append a + to the 4* rating were this possible on GoodReads.

#LucyByTheSea #NetGalley

Lucy Barton is back, and only Elizabeth Strout could have created such a memorable character. Covid has just hit New York City. Lucy's first husband, William, a parasitologist, is convinced they must leave for Maine and be as isolated as possible for what they both think will be a short term stay. We all lived those early days right along with Lucy and as days turned into weeks and into months, Covid became the new reality.

As with most if not all divorced couples, they each brought a lot of baggage into the current relationship. William has been divorced a couple of times, Lucy's previous husband died. The house where they are living is not spacious, nor is it equipped for year-round living. Lucy and William find themselves making do.

Their children, they both learn, are capable of making their own decisions; that doesn't stop Lucy from worrying about them. Much of Lucy's dialogue is in her head as she relives many parts of her life.

This is part of a loose series but can be read as a standalone novel.

Was this well-written? Yes, absolutely. Many have and will love this book for that.

Did I need to relive every single moment of the first year of the pandemic? Absolutely not.

Oh, William! was one of my favorite books of last year, though I should have skipped this one. Too soon. Felt less like a novel and more of the author processing her own experiences and anxieties through the lens of Lucy Barton.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for the ARC in exchange for my honest feedback.

Published by Random House on September 20, 2022

References to the pandemic have been sneaking into recent novels, usually adding color to the background. Lucy by the Sea is the first novel I’ve read that both makes the pandemic central to the plot and takes the viral spread of death seriously. Since the novel begins in New York, the US epicenter of the pandemic in its early days, the fear of death that the characters experience rings true. Because they rapidly scamper from New York, however, their fear is largely animated by news reports rather than firsthand experience. The pandemic is therefore central to the plot while still remaining in the background. In most respects, Lucy by the Sea is a typical New York domestic drama, complete with infidelity and family crises and a protagonist who writes novels.

Lucy Barton narrates the story from her privileged perspective. Lucy is a novelist who lives in New York. She has appeared in a couple of novels that the New York literary establishment holds in high regard, but I haven't read them so Lucy is new to me. She is an older white woman who feels insulted when her daughter’s boyfriend mentions that she only writes books about older white women. Not that it’s wrong to do so, but Lucy by the Sea is very much a novel about an older white woman.

Lucy has been a widow for more than a year. Although her age and location enhance her vulnerability to the virus, she doesn’t watch the news and is surprised when William, her first husband, insists that she accompany him to Maine until it is safe to return to the city. She tries not to be angry with her dead husband for leaving her to cope with a pandemic but seems to be grateful that a former husband came along to protect her.

Lucy is surprised that people in Maine assume New Yorkers feel superior to them. Lucy shouldn’t be surprised because she does, in fact, feel superior. Avoiding contact with people in Maine is not difficult for her because she doesn’t want to know them, apart from a man who gives her his undivided attention when they’re together.

Quarantined in Maine, Lucy starts watching the news. She congratulates herself for being angry about George Floyd. It reminds her of her “deep response” to the brutality inflicted on Abner Luima. I suppose belated wokeness is better than none, but I suspect that Lucy is more concerned about the impact of police violence on her emotions than the harm it causes to the victims. She recalls that a black writer at a conference told her about being afraid of driving alone on an empty Indiana road and says “I thought about that for a long time” without revealing what she thought. Why Lucy so frequently tells the reader that she thinks unspecified thoughts about various topics was a mystery to me.

On the other hand, when Lucy describes her thoughts, they are so uninteresing that she should have kept them to herself. When William gets excited about potato parasites (a topic within his field of scientific expertise), Lucy takes note of her own (fleeting) interest: “I thought about how when a person is really excited about something, it can be contagious.” Usually she’s thinking about how something makes her feel. Much of the novel consists of Lucy telling the reader “this made me happy” or “this made me sad” which, as plots go, isn’t much of one.

Lucy admonishes herself for being selfish (not giving up a place in a long line for an older man) and, again, seems pleased with her self-awareness, her recognition that she is selfish, while making no effort to change. She does not recognize (although the reader will) her talent for sucking the pleasure out of every moment. Standing near the water and admiring the view, she begins to fret about what might happen if she falls, so she goes inside again where she can feel safe in her isolation. Lucy enjoys talking with William but hates him when he doesn’t give her his undivided attention.

Lucy frets about growing old and the risk of dementia. She frets about losing her ex-husband the way she lost her husband. She frets about her childhood. She frets about her children. She frets about college students not respecting her work. She frets about whether people have free will. She frets about her hair. She frets about cultural divisions in the country (something she apparently failed to notice until she left New York). She is “petrified” about her lack of connection to her New York apartment. She feels “great anguish” that her adult children do not contact her as often as they did when they were younger, which makes her fret about whether she was “the mother I thought I had been.” Late in the novel, she writes “In December, I noticed a drop in my mood,” In February, she reports “I often felt sad.” Some months later, “An emptiness had come into me.” She might be the dreariest person alive.

William is also depressed — not because he is living with Lucy, although that would be a depressing experience for most men. William is lonely and Lucy provides relief, although they can’t resume their marital intimacy because William has a medical problem. That might be why he’s depressed and lonely, but Lucy is too self-absorbed to see William’s depression as anything other than reflection of her own unhappiness. Lucy’s friend Charlene appears to be lonely, which only makes Lucy frightened that she might appear to others to be lonely.

Part of the story revolves around Lucy’s family. Lucy worries that one of her daughters is demonizing her husband because (as she knows from personal experience) women sometimes do that to justify their desire to have an affair. According to William, Lucy’s mother is a “whack job,” but Lucy has unresolved feelings about her (she imagines receiving daily guidance from a nice mother). Lucy’s daughter refuses to abandon a husband who refuses to leave Brooklyn, but she’s frightened by refrigerated trucks collecting people who have died. Lucy’s sister joins a far-right church that finds masks during a pandemic to be ungodly (she trusts God to protect her) and admonishes Lucy for believing that germs can kill people. People in Lucy’s family eventually get sick with COVID; a daughter has a difficult pregnancy; her daughters’ marriages are troubled through no fault of their adoring husbands, perhaps because the daughters are emulating their mother. Lucy has some good advice for one of her daughters, although she’s largely repeating the unheeded advice she got from her psychiatrist.

Lucy by the Sea might be a good book for women who believe (rightly or wrongly) that they are in bad marriages. It might be a good book for older, sheltered women of means who live in New York. It wasn’t a good book for me but I’m probably the wrong reader for it. I’m tired of reading mundane observations like “we do the best we can.”

Elizabeth Strout won a Pulitzer and her writing style is fluid, so who am I to complain about her work? I can only say that I found the book more annoying than appealing.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Hmm...it might be just a bit too soon to read a story based on the covid-19 lockdowns. I enjoyed the writing and the family dynamics, but not so much the time period. It brings back too many memories.

This book is tricky for me to rate. While I haven't read the previous novels in the series, it wasn't necessary.

Lucy and her ex-husband William escape to the countryside of Main to ride out he pandemic, as they both live in New York. Lucy is naïve to what is happening, but William understands the gravity of the situation and works to not only get them out of the city, but their two daughters. Along the way William and Lucy find a new love for each other and their new life in Maine.

I really loved how this book is from the perspective of someone who didn't understand the gravity of COVID-19. I also really enjoyed how the novel included BLM protests and even politics. The novel was written in a stream of consciousness style and read like Lucy's diary, which made it more fun to read.

Thank you to #NetGalley and Random House Publishing for the e-ARC copy and I do apologize for the late review.

We can welcome Lucy and her ex-husband William back into our lives, this time with the backdrop of the Covid pandemic. When I read about the early days of the pandemic from Lucy's point of view, it all came back: how little we knew, how little the experts knew, the quandary of how much to isolate, the logistics of isolation. What stands out again in this novel is Strout's ability to convey Lucy's voice. As someone of a similar age, to me it seems spot on in its conversational style, its introspection, and interesting observations. I was disappointed when it ended.

I really loved this book. Others have covered the plot points and the story's expected - but still delightful! - overlap with Strout's other books, so I'll stick to how she made me feel: unexpectedly, utterly soothed.

'Lucy by the Sea' is hot tea with honey in your favorite mug, in book form. It made me not only want to call my mom, but connect with strangers. Strout's writing always reminds me of the John Donne poem - "any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind" - because it's just bursting with humanity. This is no exception, and probably my favorite thing she's written so far.

Lucy by the Sea is a story about a woman who leave NYC during the beginning of the Covid pandemic and goes to a house in Maine with her ex-husband. It deals with isolation, concerns about family and Covid. This book just moved too slow for me. It felt like it was written as a diary entry.

If you want to read about how Lucy and William survived the pandemic, and their thoughts on quarantine, BLM, George Floyd, protests, vaccines, the election, and the January riots, this is the book for you. This is not just the background setting, it’s the entire subject of the book.

These are bad memories that I don’t like to revisit even with good friends, and I certainly don’t want to read about it in such detail in my fiction.

Just to be clear, I’m vaxxed, I wore my mask, and I followed quarantine and distancing protocols, and I too find myself annoyed at people who wear their mask under their nose. I don’t necessarily disagree with everything the author expressed, so that is not my reason for disliking the book. Lucy and William come across as unlikable, pretentious and judgmental.

No subject was left untouched. When Lucy assumes her married daughter was considering an affair with a man, the daughter reacts in horror: “Mom, where have you been? How do you even know it’s a man? It could be a woman, a gender-non-conforming individual…..where have you been the last couple of years? We don’t make assumptions like that anymore.”

Fine, of course. I agree, it could have been a woman. So what? But really, did Lucy deserve to be attacked for assuming her heterosexual daughter was considering an affair with a man? (Btw, spoiler alert, it was a man, the author simply used this device as an opportunity to lecture her readers).

If this sounds good to you, go for it. It most definitely was not for me. There is plenty of high praise for this book, so I feel a bit like a fish swimming upstream. However, pandemic books with political overtones are not for me. Ever.

DNF at 10%, unfortunately the writing really was not for me and the way it talked about COVID put me off. Moreover, I didn't know this was part of a series, since it didn't appear in the synopsis.

The trials and tribulations of Lucy as she deals with the pandemic, the loss of her husband, and quarantining with her ex-husband. I kept waiting for something to happen but it never really did.

During the COVID pandemic, Lucy moves with her ex-husband from New York City to Maine to quarantine. The story reads somewhat like diary entries and chronicles Lucy’s life and that of her family and friends during this tumultuous time. I would like to say I enjoyed this book, but I just didn’t. Everything about the book was depressing and I couldn’t wait to be finished with it.

“It is interesting how people endure things.”
I don’t know how it happened, but this was my first read in the Lucy Barton series and I am so intrigued about what I have been missing.
The writing is simplistic, it is the thoughts and perception of Lucy alone as she goes through life and in this specific novel, as she is whisked out of New York by her former husband just prior to the lockdown. Lucy doesn’t know what’s going on and as she watches from the news what is happening back home it’s like she cannot understand it. Lucy is like all of us, except Elizabeth Strout so eloquently captures the feelings many of us still fail to express from that time.
I had heard friends say that reading these novels feels like hearing stories from an old friend and after reading Lucy by the Sea I understand it. There’s something comforting in hearing it all from Lucy, yes even hearing about the toughest couple years of all of our lives, and relatable in the almost diary style writing. Lucy is a writer, but she’s also normal and her thoughts and experience don’t feel like I’m reading a made up character’s life, but rather that of someone I could meet on the street. The words on these pages captured the resilience and bravery of that time and the empathy Strout captures is really quite incredible.
Lucy by the Sea might have been my first in the series, but I’ll be going back to the beginning to read them all.

In Lucy by the Sea we catch up with Lucy Barton as she navigates the struggles of isolation and feelings of uncertainty during COVID-19. Like Oh William! Strout packs her short novel full of all the emotions we likely all felt over the past few years. She touches upon loneliness, anxiety, fear, grief, loss and change in her conversational way that is so endearing and relatable.

I am a huge fan of Elizabeth Strout and Lucy by the Sea delivers in all the ways I was hoping it would. It was touching and melancholic, but also filled with new experiences, new friendships.

I enjoyed Lucy by the Sea immensely and read it in one sitting. It felt like I was catching up with an old friend and I didn’t want the visit to end. That said, Lucy by the Sea left me feeling a tad bit more sad than hopeful. Perhaps it was the overall sense that while reflecting on her life Lucy felt an array of emotions but regret seemed to be at the forefront.

If you’re a Strout fan and enjoyed Oh William! you should run to the bookstore to read the lastest thoughts and experiences of Lucy Barton. You won’t be disappointed.

Eery in its accuracy and the emotions it calls up for the reader. What started out as a few weeks away from NYC to ride out the pandemic, ended up life changing..

My favorite of the Lucy Barton books.. a thoughtful meditation on life, love, and loneliness in COVID-times, though this didn't feel like a "COVID book". Elizabeth Strout's ability to craft seemingly simple sentences that hit at complicated, human emotions is a gift.

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout is the fourth book in the Amgash series. In this novel, Lucy and William move to a small town in Maine to escape the covid outbreak in New York. While they are locked down together, they rekindle their on-again, off-again relationship. Strout does an amazing job of capturing the emotions and complexity of the covid crisis. Even though this is book four in the series, this book does work as a stand-alone. Thanks to NetGalley for the free digital review copy. All opinions are my own.