Lucy by the Sea

 

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout

Amgash, #4

Fiction

2022

Finished on December 17, 2025

Rating: 4/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

With her trademark crystalline prose, Elizabeth Strout turns her exquisitely tuned eye to the inner workings of the human heart, following the indomitable heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton through the early days of the pandemic.

As a panicked world goes into lockdown, Lucy Barton is uprooted from her life in Manhattan and bundled away to a small town in Maine by her ex-husband and on-again, off-again friend, William. For the next several months, it's just Lucy, William, and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the moody sea.

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.

If you hadn't noticed, I've been reading (and re-reading) a lot of Elizabeth Strout's novels this year. After re-reading Olive, Again, I jumped back into Strout's Amgash series which focuses mainly on Lucy Barton and her friends and relatives. I was somewhat disappointed with Oh William! but once I finished that book, I immediately picked up Lucy by the Sea and was instantly engrossed. I can't explain why, but I don't mind reading books set during the pandemic. I know a lot of people would like to forget about those first years during lockdown, but I like to revisit those months, reminding myself just how far we've come. Strout reminds her readers how especially scary it was to be a New Yorker during the first year of pandemic, and I am forever grateful that we live in a small community, mostly isolated from large crowds. (I've written about those early years here.)

Notable Passages:

Here is what I did not know that morning in March: I did not know that I would never see my apartment again. I did not know that one of my friends a family member would die of this virus. I did not know that my relationship with my daughters would change in ways I could never have anticipated. I did not know that my entire life would become something new.

 

Who knows why people are different? We are born with a certain nature, I think. And then the world takes its swings at us.

 

I thought then that William had been right to bring me up here, where I could walk freely even if I didn't see many people. The question of why some people are luckier than others--I have no answer for this.

 

It has been said that the second year of widowhood is worse than the first--the idea being, I think, that the shock has worn off and now one has to simply live with the loss...

And I also understood: Grief is a private thing. God, is it a private thing. 

 

It is a gift in this life that we do not know what awaits us. 

In any case, Lucy by the Sea was a much more relatable and moving story than Oh William!, despite sharing the same anecdotal first-person delivery that I disliked in Oh William! I came to care about Lucy as I eventually did with Olive Kitteridge, and enjoyed seeing all the familiar faces that have been such a big part of Strout's stories. As soon as I finished this book, I happily picked up Tell Me Everything, the 5th in the Amgash series.

Heartwarming as well as somber ... Although simple on the surface, Strout's new novel manages, like her other, 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

Highly recommend, but should be read in order, at least with the Amgash books.