Lucy by the Sea

Many of Strout’s novels are set in a fictional area of rural Maine, and feature her invented towns of Crosby, Shirley Falls, and West Annett. Strout was born and raised in Portland, Maine, and some speculate that Crosby is based on the actual town of Brunswick, Maine. The towns are small, set in rural coastal Maine, and the residents are mostly white working-class people.

Strout introduced this fictional world in her debut novel, Amy and Isabelle (1998). Isabelle and her daughter live in Shirley Falls, a mill town that has fallen on hard times. Strout continues building this rural Maine community in her next novel, Abide with Me (2006), which takes place in nearby West Annett. In Olive Kitteridge (2008) and later, Olive, Again (2019), Strout creates another nearby town, Crosby, which will be the setting of Lucy by the Sea (2022). In The Burgess Boys (2013), Strout returns Bob and Jim Burgess to their hometown of Shirley Falls. Each of these books builds this coastal Maine community, its residents, and geography.

Within this world, Strout’s characters pass from book to book, often appearing in each other’s stories. For example, Isabelle and Olive become friends in Olive, Again, living near each other in an assisted living facility. With this strategy, Strout offers the reader opportunities to know characters better than they could from just one book—the reader is able to view these figures and events from different perspectives. Strout aims to create the sense that this a real, fully developed world, where characters intersect and even, in the case of Bob Burgess and Katherine Caskey (a character from Abide with Me), know each other from childhood., Strout also emphasizes how every person has their own narrative—that everyone is the protagonist of their own story, and all people’s lives are rich and complex.

With her series featuring Lucy Barton, beginning with My Name is Lucy Barton (2016), Strout shifts her attention away from her fictional Maine world. The early books featuring Lucy take place in New York City and Amgash, Illinois. Her book Anything is Possible (2017) contains interconnected stories that trace the residents of Amgash, Illinois and Lucy’s return home for the first time in 17 years. With the next book in the series, Oh, William! (2021), Strout introduces Lucy to her fictional Maine community for the first time as she and William meet up with his half sister, Lois. And in Lucy by the Sea, Strout brings Lucy to Maine again, this time, it appears, to stay.  

In Lucy by the Sea, Lucy’s narrative intersects with Strout’s fictional Maine community of Crosby in a more lasting way than in Oh, William! In addition to placing Lucy in the geographical landscape, Strout also has her interact with other characters from the Maine novels. Bob Burgess becomes a close friend of Lucy’s. In addition, Lucy’s friend Charlene talks about Olive Kitteridge and her friend Isabelle, a friendship between the protagonists of Olive Kitteridge and Amy and Isabelle that develops in Olive, Again. Katherine Caskey, the daughter of the minister in Abide with Me appears as well, and she and Bob discover that they had seen each other as children.

Strout’s books all stand alone—the reader does not have to be familiar with any of her other work in order to grasp the meaning of a particular book. Yet familiarity with the breadth of her work offers insight into connections between characters and events. In this way, Strout creates a longer narrative that travels through all of her work.