Lockdown With Lucy
Elizabeth Strout's last novel, "Oh, William!," was recently longlisted for the prestigious Booker Award... and I enjoyed this year's "Lucy by the Sea" so much more. Both books feature the title character first arriving in "My Name is Lucy Barton." In "Oh, William!" Lucy constantly referred back to previous events and characters and followed up with "...but I'm not going to go into that now..." asides. The book was enjoyable and made sense as a stand-alone, but I had the sense of missing out by not being privy to the source of these references.
Now, in "Lucy by the Sea," The Pandemic. She is having trouble grasping what is happening to her world, the whole world, during the opening days of the outbreak. We were all thrown for a loop and it is hard to choose to revisit the panic we felt during the height of the disaster. Many editors counseled their authors to shy away from the topic, that readers were looking for escape.
Too soon? Reading "Lucy by the Sea" I felt I could trust Elizabeth Strout with my post-covid fears. Lucy is not smarter than us in the way she reacts to the crisis, she is a real and ordinary and flawed human being. Viewing her response in hindsight we can sympathize with her bewilderment, the effects this is having on her. She worries about her memory and mental capacity at times. One of her friends reassures her that she is not alone, she could chalk it up as "Covid mind." Nothing in that time was easy to digest.
While set in the Covid era, this is Elizabeth Strout and we are not limited to social disaster. Interpersonal relationships are at the core. Lucy has fled New York with her first husband, William, and is now isolated from her daughters, her brother, and her sister. Life went on during the pandemic, including friends dying at long distance, family breakups, troubled pregnancies-- all the life altering events hard enough to cope with when families are there to support one another. When the shocking attack on the Capital happens on January 6, she is so overloaded she can not watch the coverage, bolting from the room.
Lucy has had a lot of loss and it seems magnified now. People do come to the rescue and provide hope. William confesses that hers is the life he wanted to save. Neighbors reach out to offset the initial hostilities the couple experienced moving into the small seaport village. The imaginary "nice" mother she has conjured is there to encourage her. This counters the negative messages of her real, much colder mother from a childhood she views as a lockdown of its own.
"Lucy by the Sea" reexamines the impact the isolation had on us and the repercussions felt in our relationships. Lucy is such a riveting character-- emotional and confused at times, reeling from grief, but always resilient. It is intriguing to rerun this period through her eyes.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Elizabeth Strout's last novel, "Oh, William!," was recently longlisted for the prestigious Booker Award... and I enjoyed this year's "Lucy by the Sea" so much more. Both books feature the title character first arriving in "My Name is Lucy Barton." In "Oh, William!" Lucy constantly referred back to previous events and characters and followed up with "...but I'm not going to go into that now..." asides. The book was enjoyable and made sense as a stand-alone, but I had the sense of missing out by not being privy to the source of these references.
Now, in "Lucy by the Sea," The Pandemic. She is having trouble grasping what is happening to her world, the whole world, during the opening days of the outbreak. We were all thrown for a loop and it is hard to choose to revisit the panic we felt during the height of the disaster. Many editors counseled their authors to shy away from the topic, that readers were looking for escape.
Too soon? Reading "Lucy by the Sea" I felt I could trust Elizabeth Strout with my post-covid fears. Lucy is not smarter than us in the way she reacts to the crisis, she is a real and ordinary and flawed human being. Viewing her response in hindsight we can sympathize with her bewilderment, the effects this is having on her. She worries about her memory and mental capacity at times. One of her friends reassures her that she is not alone, she could chalk it up as "Covid mind." Nothing in that time was easy to digest.
While set in the Covid era, this is Elizabeth Strout and we are not limited to social disaster. Interpersonal relationships are at the core. Lucy has fled New York with her first husband, William, and is now isolated from her daughters, her brother, and her sister. Life went on during the pandemic, including friends dying at long distance, family breakups, troubled pregnancies-- all the life altering events hard enough to cope with when families are there to support one another. When the shocking attack on the Capital happens on January 6, she is so overloaded she can not watch the coverage, bolting from the room.
Lucy has had a lot of loss and it seems magnified now. People do come to the rescue and provide hope. William confesses that hers is the life he wanted to save. Neighbors reach out to offset the initial hostilities the couple experienced moving into the small seaport village. The imaginary "nice" mother she has conjured is there to encourage her. This counters the negative messages of her real, much colder mother from a childhood she views as a lockdown of its own.
"Lucy by the Sea" reexamines the impact the isolation had on us and the repercussions felt in our relationships. Lucy is such a riveting character-- emotional and confused at times, reeling from grief, but always resilient. It is intriguing to rerun this period through her eyes.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
