I had brunch with S. recently where she reminded me of the amazing-ness of Elizabeth Strout. So I promptly ordered My Name is Lucy Barton and Lucy by the Sea. In no small part because of my own L. Minor hiccup about 2/3rds into My Name is Lucy Barton when I realized I’d already read it, but no matter, it was a good refresher before Lucy takes to the sea.
And off she goes at the start of the pandemic and the book is so beautiful. It captures painfully and brilliantly the uncertainty of March and April 2020 for rich people living in North America. The dread and loss and fear. Reading it knowing how the course of the pandemic runs (and runs) it takes an extra sort of writerly magic to find a way to suspend that knowledge for the reader – to bring right back the ways time folded and expanded, compressed and ballooned.
I did find some of the writing grating – don’t get me wrong: extremely beautiful – but also the short sentences and declaration of feelings or thoughts just a bit much. Maybe only because I read the two so closely together that Lucy became a claustrophobic mind to occupy (though again it’s probably a credit to Strout that we so fully occupy Lucy’s perspective).
Anyway, it’s a fast, beautiful read, if you’re ready to revisit those days.
Literary Vice 