Lisa's Reviews > Lucy by the Sea

I love my time with Elizabeth Strout. She sees into the human heart and speaks to me like no other writer does. If 2020 is far enough back in your rearview mirror, this exploration of the time is worth a read.

Less structured than the previous Lucy books, Strout's writing reflects Lucy's discombobulation during the first year of the pandemic. William has their daughters leave the city and then takes Lucy away to Maine keep her safe. Unsure of what is happening and in a state of disbelief, Lucy watches the scenes of medical facilities being overwhelmed and bodies being carted away from NYC on the news.

"I still did not get it, the importance of what was happening. It's odd how the mind does not take in anything until it can."

"There was a feeling of mutedness. Like my ears were plugged up as though I was underwater."

"Even as all of this went on, even with the knowledge that my doctor had said it would be a year, I still did not . . . I don't know how to say it, but my mind was having trouble taking things in. It was as though each day was like a huge stretch of ice I had to walk over. And in the ice were small trees stuck there and twigs, this is the only way I can describe it, as though the world had become a different landscape and I had to make it through each day without knowing when it would stop, and it seemed it would not stop, and so I felt a great uneasiness."

One of my good friends reacted the way Lucy did. She couldn't concentrate or focus. She couldn't read. Work was a struggle for her. I reacted more like William. Being a person of action I researched reliable sources of information and followed everything that scientists were learning about the virus and kept up to date with best clinical practices as they evolved. I also needed a physical outlet for this tension and spent many hours working in the yard (my flower beds have never looked so good) and hiking and biking with my husband (alas that 5 pounds I lost has returned.).

Lucy also experiences the grief of losing friends and family to this virus. I lost a good friend that first November. We didn't have vaccines or known anti-virals at that point. And so those of you who have not attended a funeral via Zoom know , let me share that it it sucks!

As Lucy and her ex-husband William settle into their temporary lives in Maine things get bumpy for both of their daughters. There is family drama--sadness and laughter.

I am delighted with the appearance of characters from Strout's previous works.

Strout shows less assurance when she dips briefly into politics-- sweat shop labor, George Floyd, and the divisiveness in our country. These topics are mentioned and then dropped. Of the attack on the Captiol Lucy says:

"I had felt my childhood humiliation so deeply. And what if I had continued to feel that my entire life, what if all the jobs I had taken in my life were not enough to really make a living, what if I felt looked down upon all the time by the wealthier people in this country, who made fun of my religion and my guns. I did not have religion and I did not have guns, but I suddenly felt that I saw what these people were feeling; they were like my sister, Vicky, and I understood them. They had been made to feel poorly about themselves, they were looked at with disdain, and they could no longer stand it.,"

"And then I thought, No those were Nazis and racists at the Capitol. And so my understanding — my imagining of the breaking of the windows — stopped there."

Weeks later when preparing for a short trip into the city Lucy concludes

"I wondered if I had become too frightened to return to New York again. It was funny, but I felt that in my enclosed world I had somehow become worse . . . about my fears. I could not stop feeling that life as I had known it was gone. Because it was."

Like Lucy, I continue to navigate my way through this changed world.