I was happy to receive a copy of Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy By The Sea (thanks to Random House and NetGalley) in exchange for this honest review. I recall reading her Oh William! But couldn’t remember much about it…looking back, I realized I had never gotten around to writing a review…so it clearly wasn’t a grabber or a five star thriller-kept-me-up-all-night kind of book, but it was…fine. 

And TBH that’s how I felt about Lucy by the Sea. I liked the way it so perfectly captured the early stage of the 2020 lockdown, and I could relate to many things about Lucy. As she says, “I’ve been socially distancing for sixty-six years,” and “…foreign places always frighten me. I like places that are familiar. “ But although my own situation has been stable (to the point of being boring at times), when Lucy’s New York life is uprooted by the pandemic, she feels that, “…there was always a small, but for me very real, sense of hope that maybe today would bring something different, that the pandemic would pass…”

When Lucy’s ex William takes her off to an isolated spot in Maine, where it is just the two of them for several months, they have plenty of time to deal with their complex relationship and how best to deal with their fears and struggles. Lucy says “I could not stop feeling that life as I had known it was gone, Because it was. I knew this was true.” The upside is that they have months of long, quiet days together and their deep connection really is unbreakable. 
Reading  it felt a bit like settling into a comfy chair in a flannel nightgown and losing oneself in a familiar story. Somehow, you don’t know quite where it’s going, but it kinda feels like it is all going to be all right. (Admittedly, this is not a feeling I have been able to capture about COVID, even after two and a half years.) Lucy comes through it in some ways because of her feeling that “…it is a gift in this life that we do not know what awaits us.”  Four strong stars.