It is as though we are with a friend, and she is telling us the story of her pandemic year. To a reader already familiar with Lucy, we are immediately comforted by this turn of phrase: we know the way she speaks and the way she thinks. It is her way of making sure her meaning is clear. She uses this phrase to restate or to clarify what she has already said. Strout also employs one of Lucy’s often-used catchphrases when she says “is what I mean.” Lucy says this many times in the earlier books, but here, in combination with this opening, we feel the echo of that sense of bearing down, of trying to get it right. There is a drilling down that happens with the “One” and then the “i,” as though we are being led down into an empty space. Like many others, I did not see it coming.īut William is a scientist, and he saw it coming he saw it sooner than I did, is what I mean. Strout uses this technique right from the start, which underscores the starkness of the time but also asserts that we are beginning from the start: The novel is visually interesting, as well, with paragraphs often separated by white space. Once again, Strout, a Ploughshares guest editor and contributor, has written a novel that pulls the reader in with its strength of voice, its compelling interiority, and a sense of community that welcomes the reader into its pages.
But soon enough-only twelve pages in, in fact-I found I couldn’t put the book down. I wasn’t convinced that the novel would have enough in it compel me to read beyond my apprehensions and anxieties. So I began reading the book, even though I was aware that I was holding back a bit, not allowing myself to be completely drawn in. A chance to spend time in another world, one that may well have its own chaos and trouble, but one that is distinctly not the one we’re living in.īut because Elizabeth Strout is Elizabeth Strout, and Lucy Barton is Lucy Barton, I couldn’t resist. Fiction during this time has been a solace for me, a retreat. It’s too soon, somehow it’s all too familiar. But this novel is Lucy’s journey through the first year of the pandemic, and I have struggled reading fiction about the pandemic. There is a strength and an honesty to Lucy’s voice that I greatly admire the first-person voice is used perfectly to define and delineate character. The Lucy in the title is Lucy Barton, of course, who first appeared in My Name is Lucy Barton (2016), then tangentially in Anything is Possible (2017), and finally in Oh William! (2021), which was published less than a year ago. I love Strout’s work, and I’ve read all her books. When I first read about Lucy by the Sea, Elizabeth Strout’s newest novel-out today-my heart sank a little.
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