Lucy by the Sea From the Booker-longlisted author of Oh William!

With thanks to NetGalley and Penguin for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. Lucy by the Sea is the fourth book in Elizabeth Strout’s series centring on Lucy Barton and her family, relationships and childhood in the impoverished town of Amgash, Illinois. This instalment finds Lucy in lockdown with her ex-husband William in a house in Maine. I have read the other Lucy Barton books quite recently due to Oh William’s inclusion on the longlist for this year’s Booker Prize. They are all quite short and highly readable books. The character Lucy Barton has such a strong and unique narrative voice and, although we see into the lives of others in her orbit only in fragments, the plot of each novel is quietly compelling. This book is part of what I think will one day be a genre called Pandemic Literature. This is an experience we have all lived through so recently, and there were many times in the book where I would say to myself: “Yes! I felt that too, exactly!” Strout also touches on other issues that Americans were grappling with in 2020 and early 2021, such as the murder of George Floyd, the 2020 Presidential Election and the Capitol Riots. Louise Erdrich’s The Sentence tackles similar themes. Strout’s novel deals with these real world events with her typical subtlety and sensitivity. Lucy Barton is a character who is open to people and to connections. Even as it becomes easier to connect to others online, it seems to have become more difficult to connect in a deeper, more human way. We tend to see the headlines of people’s lives and just end there. Lucy Barton is a character who is still willing to see the humanity in people. A deeply human book.