Review of LUCY BY THE SEA:
Familiar writing, familiar themes, familiar pandemic ... thank you
There are three legs to the stool that is this beautiful book. The first is that this is the fourth book in a finely crafted quartet of Lucy Barton novels. Strout does multi volume series about women extraordinarily well. Her Olive Kitteridge series has been written concurrently with the Lucy Barton novels and mirrors the same strengths one finds in Lucy by the Sea. To write a series well is a gift rooted in the combination of deep character development and an evocative sense of place. Each novel in the series must mirror both elements for it to be a continuous whole connected by separate stories. The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy comes to mind – a sadly overlooked masterpiece by a wonderful writer caught between his turn of the century sensibilities and the encroaching modern world. There are many great “series” out there that pass this test (see below). When using “series”, I am only including the “serious series”, not the mass-produced mysteries, thrillers, fantasies and romcoms that fill our bookstore shelves. I consider this type of creative ambition to be immensely rewarding as a reader. With each addition, the characters, the settings, and the all-important themes become more and more a part of your own sensibilities.
Lucy by the Sea is a pandemic novel though I suspect Strout would have written a similar novel without the added dimension of Covid. The pandemic provides not only complex plot lines but gives her that more room to expand her characters, principally William and Lucy. Their responses to the pandemic are subtle and familiar and make the novel only more accessible and moving. She writes effortlessly but concisely with dialogue that never rings a false note. Given the withholding nature of literary criticism, I believe that her success has unfairly obfuscated the level of her art. Her stories are intensely and universally personal bereft of social agendas and pedantry. I hope she starts another Lucy or Olive … maybe a man this time?
A quick & dirty & woefully uncomprehensive LIST of memorable “series”:
(NOTE: a series NOT based on fantasy or science fiction, NOT linked by a detective or private eye or NOT part of an all-encompassing fictional location like Hardy’s Wessex or Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County)
Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy
The Smiley trilogy by John Le Carre
Thomas Cromwell trilogy by Hilary Mantel
Cicero trilogy by Robert Harris
The Frank Bascombe novels by Richard Ford
The Rabbit novels (4 of them) by John Updike
The Barsetshire novels (6 of them) by Anthony Trollope
The Corfu trilogy by Gerald Durrell
Jane Gardham’s Old Filth trilogy
Lucy by the Sea
Elizabeth Strout
2022 291 pages