Lucy by the Sea

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout comes a poignant pitch-perfect novel about a divorced couple stuck together during lockdown—and the love loss despair and hope that animate us even as the world seems to be falling apart.. Strout's understanding of the human condition is capacious.—NPR. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review The New Yorker Oprah Daily Entertainment Weekly San Francisco Chronicle NPR Time The Washington Post The Christian Science Monitor PopSugar She Reads. With her trademark spare crystalline prose—a voice infused with intimate fragile desperate humanness (The Washington Post)—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 swirling sea.. Rich with empathy and emotion 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.. Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize