Lucy by the Sea – Elizabeth Strout

In this novel Elizabeth Strout returns to one of her oft-visited characters, Lucy Barton, and follows her through the Covid19 pandemic.

At the outbreak, or just before, she is living alone in her New York City apartment – alone as her second husband, David, has not long since died. She remains on friendly terms with her first husband, William, and it is he, a scientist, who alerts her to the imminent danger and by force of personality whisks her off to a coastal property that he has rented in Maine.

Over the course of the pandemic, with its isolating and disinfecting protocols, social distancing, and paranoia (justifiable as friends and acquaintances succumb to the virus), her relationship with William and daughters Chrissy and Becka change. While contact with William is necessarily close, her previous close contact with the girls now becomes unavoidably remote. We see through her eyes, and her anxieties, changes for William (who discovers a half-sister) and the girls (whose domestic relationships are put under pressure).

Lucy narrates throughout, in a somewhat quirky style, more conversational than written, that treats the reader as a close confident. It engenders a genuine buy-in to the outcomes. The setting of coastal Maine is vivid, and the pandemic context is now a quaint but potent reminder of those strange times.

Pre-knowledge (I had none) of the earlier Lucy Barton novels does not hinder enjoyment. The occasional references back are slotted in seamlessly with scant but sufficient detail that, if anything, entices the reader to go back for more. Which I will do, having thoroughly enjoyed this one.