Lucy By The Sea by Elizabeth Strout
Lucy Barton - the Covid years: 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 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. 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.
