BookTrib: Lucy Barton Finds Love During Pandemic

Strout excels at distilling complex human emotions — fear of failure, regret that we never measured up — into something familiar and understandable.… Lucy By The Sea holds its own as an engaging and relatable story, where human bonds of love and meaning — over-examined and frayed as they may become in crisis — still serve as the essence of what makes us feel we matter and belong.
Anne Eliot Feldman, “Long-Divorced Lucy Barton Finds Love During Pandemic,” BookTrib, September 19th, 2022.

Boston Globe: Getting to the Heart of the Matter

In its emotional heft and honesty, its ability to go fearlessly to the darkest places, its pellucid empathy and its spot-on rendering of the pandemic experience for both individuals and the country, [Lucy by the Sea] is perhaps the best of the four marvelous novels Strout has written featuring Lucy Barton.

Booker Prize Shortlist: Profile, Readers Guide, Extracts, Readings

No-one writes interior life as Strout does. This is meticulous observed writing, full of probing psychological insight. Lucy Barton is one of literature’s immortal characters – brittle, damaged, unravelling, vulnerable and most of all, ordinary, like us all.
— The Booker Prize 2022 judges on Oh William!

Profile and collection of features including written interviews, an article on the Lucy Barton series, a Reading Guide (for bookclubs and individual readers), a video Q&A with readers, and two short videos featuring Anna Friel reading extracts from Oh William!

Elizabeth Strout,” Authors, the Booker Prize Library, The Booker Prizes website, September 6, 2022.