Lucy by the Sea begins at the onset of the 2020 pandemic. Our protagonist Lucy Barton is whisked away from her home in Manhattan to a small town in Maine by her ex-husband William. We follow Lucy Barton as she navigates the new world under lockdown, her anxiety, living in a small house with William, a tense relationship with her daughters, and the many forms of grief that the pandemic showed us.
I enjoyed the first person narration and getting to know our protagonist. To be inside Lucy Barton’s head and watch the world from her perspective was interesting. Strout’s writing is simple, anthentic and it’s very stream-of-consiousness writing and hence very in the moment. More than anything, Lucy by the Sea reminded me that I lived through that pandemic too, and that was a difficult thing for all of us collectively. We got through a really difficult time. I remember wondering, the next time I was on the subway, what these people must have gone through back then? What they must be going through now? If anything, Lucy by the Sea renewed my sense of empathy for all of us.
Here are some of my highlights.
“…This had often broken my heart, to realize that you never know the last time you pick up a child. Maybe you say “Oh, honey, you’re getting too big to be picked up” or something like that. But then you never pick them up again.”
“And when I found out that I had been living a parallel life, a dishonest life, it crushed me. But I have often thought that it made me a nicer person, I really do. When you are truly humbled, that can happen. I have come to notice this in life. You can become bigger or bitter, that is what I think. And as a result of that pain, I became bigger. Because I understood then how a woman could not know. It had happened, and it had happened to me.”
“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 and 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.”