Lucy By The Sea--A Review

 I have read all the novels Elizabeth Strout has written. I've read them all because the first one I read, Olive Kitteridge, is a special book. If you've watched the tv series and not read the book, I suggest you take it out of your local library.  It is very very good.

Lucy By The Sea is Strout's fourth book about Lucy Barton. I liked the first one, My Name is Lucy Barton. This one, I write at the risk of being pilloried by Strout devotees, is not a very good book.  I've a number of reasons.

The first is, well, enough already with Lucy.  We know about her mother, her marriages, her upbringing, her siblings--there is very little that is new here.  This novel takes place during the pandemic. William, an ex husband and father of her two daughters, scoops Lucy up out of New York and drives her to Maine. Lucy is not a COVID denier, but she is not as concerned--at least initially-as William is about the dangers of the virus.  Nevertheless she travels with him to Maine and they live in a home near the coast.  They take separate bedrooms and try, like many of us did, to deal with the hours after the world closed up. Some of her observations are akin to those I, and I imagine most readers had during the pandemic. I'll not divulge plot details--such as they are.   Four books about Lucy--there's not enough more to discuss.

The book is also not engagingly written. Lucy Barton, the character, is supposedly a successful author who has been on television discussing her books, and been on book tours. She is also the narrator of this novel.  A popular author should be able to write better. Lucy often speaks like a child--like perhaps a senior who has been addled by some illness or severe emotional turbulence.  I typically like books with short sections, but here there are just too many of them. It is as if the book is written in three or four paragraph bites. Sometimes there is just a space between sections, sometimes some marker indicating more of a content break.  If Lucy Barton wrote for a living like Lucy Barton narrates the novel, I don't think she would have published many novels.

I will not, as mentioned previously, divulge much about the story line.  However, I don't find the issues she and William face and how they evolve, especially profound.  Their relationship with the daughters; William's relationship with an ex wife; Lucy's dreaming about a dead husband--well okay, but nothing especially novel about this novel's plot line.

Finally, there are characters in this book from other Strout books--not just the Lucy books.  Olive Kitteridge shows up, one of the Burgess boys from the novel The Burgess Boys. Isabelle from Amy and Isabelle.  Olive has such a small role--just referenced by another character--that it is not essential to remember the details of her life.  But the Burgess boy has a major part and there are allusions to his siblings and the story in that other novel. I only vaguely remember the other book and understanding Burgess in this book requires--for full appreciation--remembering Burgess from the other book.  I feel similarly about Isabelle. She does not have as big a part as Burgess. But there is a section when Isabelle recalls an incident that is not insignificant to this novel, but you would have to remember the other book to get it.  And I barely do.  If you haven't read the others I am not sure the reference to what Isabelle recalls would have much significance.

As I look through the Amazon reviews of the book, my take on the novel is in the minority.  Many like the book a lot. So, you may enjoy the novel. i didn't. Not the kind of book I carried along so that if I had a spare moment I could get lost in the story. It was a slog. And only 288 pages.  My recommendation to the author is to find another character to write about and jettison the Barton writing style.

Bad Sex--Review

Lately I have been attempting to publish pieces in varied literary magazines. One thing that recurred when reading the submission rules for these publications is that a blog post counts as a publication. That is, if one has published an artcle/opinion piece in a blog, and the magazine requires that any submission has not been published elsewhere--the existence of the blog post technically disqualifies the submission. Therefore, I have not been writing here.

However, I will begin again to post book reviews at least--unless I believe that I might want to publish the review elsewhere.

I've been reading, as is my wont.  It was family lore, and true, that when I was a kid my mother had to harass me to get me to read.  As long as she was alive she would marvel that I had become a reader since it had been pulling teeth to get me to read when I was a child. Lately, I've gone on an Ann Patchett tear. I've read now nearly all of her books and her two essay collections. (One of her lesser known books is called Taft and it is terrific. I inhaled it one week this past spring).  

But I am not writing about Taft or Ann Patchett with this blog entry.  I am writing about a book called Bad Sex written by Nona Willis-Aronowitz.  I should have known about her famous mother, but did not.  Ellen Willis, I learned, was a feminist in the early days of the 60s feminist movement.  Her daughter penned the book Bad Sex.

This, to me, was a startling book. Of course I was born during the Truman administration, and the author was born during Reagan.  I have more in common--in terms of generation--with her mother than with the author.  It will be interesting to learn how the author's contemporaries feel about the book.

My thoughts.

I did my share of frolicking when I was a young 'un. However compared to Ms. Aronowitz I was a monk. If she is the norm, I am in another world in terms of slow dancing.

Second, if this book had been written by a man he would have been pilloried mercilessly.  She discusses her affairs in detail. She does not boast so much as describe, but if a man were to describe the sundry activities that the author enjoyed, he would be dubbed a capricious and inconsiderate satyr.  

I liked her openness about sex because it,  implicitly and sometimes explicitly, criticizes the puritanical and counterproductive repressive attitudes about intimate activities that bring people joy and are, I'll opine, salubrious. 

She presented historical context in many of the chapters and I found that informative. I did not know much about Emma Goldman and knew nothing of the author's mother.  The author's discussion of the origins of the free love movement was unfamiliar to me and, I suppose, was left out of my high school history books.

Her discussion of the tension between polyamorous activity and jealousy was important to include. The part about how Goldman and Willis and Aronowitz herself had trouble reconciling their politics regarding non monogamy with how hurt they felt when their lovers took on other lovers--even when the dalliances had the partners' consent--made sense to me. 

If the book had as a goal moving the mainstream, forget it.  I thought about my parents reading the book and hurling it against the wall. And many of my contemporaries would be outraged at her, so what attitude about multiple lovers and "boning" (her word used often) this fellow or that. It can liberate those inclined to explore whether monogamy is a healthy social construct--but my guess is that 75% of the people in this establishment where I am typing the blog, would dismiss the book before the first twenty pages were up. And I live in one of the bluest of the blue states. 

My take away is that the politics of challenging the status quo in terms of sexual attitudes is important to consider and yet these politics run into a wall of natural human responses when people fear that their partners might leave them for more excitement or more whatever with another. 

While the book is called Bad Sex, there is a good deal of good or at least pleasurable sex described. 

Do I recommend the book? It was a slog at times. The book is 288 pages but I thought I had seen it was 281. When I got to 281 and there was more I was disappointed.  But if the author is anything like what is the prevailing norm of those born in the 80s, it exposed me to a culture and a set of attitudes far different to those of my generation.