Description

‘A superbly gifted storyteller and a craftswoman in a league of her own’ Hilary Mantel

FROM THE BOOKER-SHORTLISTED, PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR

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

In March 2020 Lucy Barton’s ex-husband William pleads with her to leave New York and escape to a coastal house he has rented in Maine. Lucy reluctantly agrees, leaving the washing-up in the sink, expecting to be back in a week or two. Weeks turn into months, and it’s just Lucy, William, and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the sea.

Rich with empathy and a searing clarity, Lucy by the Sea evokes the fragility and uncertainty of the recent past, as well as the possibilities that those long, quiet days can inspire. At the heart of this miraculous novel are the deep human connections that sustain us, even as the world seems to be falling apart.

‘A terrific writer’ Zadie Smith

‘I cannot get Lucy Barton out of my head’ The Times

‘She gets better with each book’ Maggie O’Farrell

Sunday Times bestseller, October 2022
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, 2022
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, 2009

Elizabeth Strout’s new novel Tell Me Everything is available for pre-order now!

Publisher Review

Stunningly universal . . . with brilliant acuity, Strout has seized on the parallels between Lucy Barton's pervasive sense of alienation and the way the recent global crisis has exposed the helplessness felt by ordinary people everywhere * Daily Telegraph, 5 stars * [Strout's] novels, intricately and painstakingly crafted, overlap and intertwine to create an instantly recognizable fictional landscape . . . you don't so much read a Strout novel as inhabit it * Guardian * A superbly gifted storyteller and a craftswoman in a league of her own -- Hilary Mantel I cannot get Lucy Barton out of my head * The Times * Strout's portrait of a divorced couple united by worry for their two grown daughters illuminates a refreshingly unexplored angle of Covid . . . They leap off the page along with their creator's salty wit and a phantom scent of hand sanitizer * New York Times * Elizabeth Strout is one of my very favourite writers -- Ann Patchett It's no secret that Elizabeth Strout is a stunning writer, but I still find myself amazed at the depth she brings to the world of her stories centered on Lucy Barton -- Taylor Jenkins Reid * The Week * Lucy by the Sea holds a mirror up to everything we have been through recently. Not only reflecting disbelief, isolation and how different and at the same time similar we are to each other, but also what happens to human relationships when we can't be together. Superb -- Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground An unflinching depiction of the ways we are all alone . . . Strout's most distinctive skill - the ability to render every character, big or small, with precision - is on full display . . . Lucy finds love oin the novel, but Strout never looks away from the loneliness that is inherent in being human: "We all live with people - and places - and things that we have given great weight to. But we are all weightless in the end." -- Sarah Collins * Prospect * [Strout] has that rare ability to immerse readers in the world of her characters . . . moments of quiet revelation - infidelities, or glimpses into the indignities of incontinence and cancer - feel poignant and real, but also unsentimental. It is a compassionate, life-affirming read, and a much-needed balm for these trying times * Straits Times * Strout captures the minutiae of recent years with insight and compassion * iNews, 40 Best Books to Read This Autumn * You would be forgiven for avoiding any pandemic-set novels for the rest of the decade, but it's worth making an exception for Elizabeth Strout's Lucy By The Sea * Vogue, Best New Books for Autumn * There is an insistent generosity in Strout's books, and a restraint that obscures the complexity of their construction * Washington Post * Lucy By the Sea is another Barton installment that confronts the deep and familiar tangles of intimate relationships . . . Through this complex and isolating time, Lucy plumbs the nuances of human connection * TIME * Poised and moving . . . It is only in the steady hands of Strout, whose prose has an uncanny, plainspoken elegance, that you will want to relive those early months of wiping down groceries and social isolation . . . This is a slim, beautifully controlled book that bursts with emotion * Vogue * After giving a beloved secondary character from her 2016 bestseller I Am Lucy Barton his own standalone with last year's Oh William!, Strout returns to the source, packing her recently widowed heroine off to Maine from Manhattan during lockdown - and exploring, in her clean inimitable prose, no less than love, loneliness, and what it means to be alive * Entertainment Weekly * Heartwarming as well as somber . . . Strout's new novel manages, like her others, 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 * Strout writes in a conversational voice, evoking those early weeks and months of the pandemic with immediacy and candor. These halting rhythms resonate . . . Rendered in Strout's graceful, deceptively light prose * New York Times Book Review *