Praise for Lucy by the Sea
“Graceful, deceptively light . . . Lucy’s done the hard work of transformation. May we do the same.”―The New York Times
“Lucy by the Sea has an anecdotal surface that belies a firm underlying structure. It is meant to feel like life―random, surprising, occasionally lit with flashes of larger meaning―but it is art.”―The New Yorker
“No novelist working today has Strout’s extraordinary capacity for radical empathy, for seeing the essence of people beyond reductive categories, for uniting us without sentimentality. I didn’t just love Lucy by the Sea; I needed it. May droves of readers come to feel enlarged, comforted, and genuinely uplifted by Lucy’s story.”―The Boston Globe
Praise for Elizabeth Strout
“One proof of Elizabeth Strout’s greatness is the sleight of hand with which she injects sneaky subterranean power into seemingly transparent prose. Strout works in the realm of everyday speech, conjuring repetitions, gaps and awkwardness with plain language and forthright diction, yet at the same time unleashing a tidal urgency that seems to come out of nowhere even as it operates in plain sight.”―The New York Times Book Review
“Strout managed to make me love this strange woman I’d never met, who I knew nothing about. What a terrific writer she is.”―Zadie Smith
“Elizabeth Strout is one of my very favorite writers. The depth, complexity, and love contained in these pages are a miraculous achievement.”―Ann Patchett
“Writing of this quality comes from a commitment to listening, from a perfect attunement to the human condition, from an attention to reality so exact that it goes beyond a skill and becomes a virtue.”―Hilary Mantel
One
i
Like many others, I did not see it coming.
But William is a scientist, and he saw it coming; he saw it sooner than I did, is what I mean.
William is my first husband; we were married for twenty years and we have been divorced for about that long as well. We are friendly, I would see him intermittently; we both were living in New York City, where we came when we first married. But because my (second) husband had died and his (third) wife had left him, I had seen him more this past year.
About the time his third wife left him, William found out that he had a half-sister in Maine; he found it out on an ancestry website. He had always thought he was an only child, so this was a tremendous surprise for him, and he asked me to go up to Maine for two days with him to find her, and we did, but the woman―her name is Lois Bubar― Well, I met her but she did not want to meet William, and this made him feel very terrible. Also, on that trip to Maine we found out things about William’s mother that absolutely dismayed him. They dismayed me as well.
His mother had come from unbelievable poverty, it turned out, even worse than the circumstances I had come from.
The point is that two months after our little trip to Maine, William asked me to go to Grand Cayman with him, which is where we had gone with his mother, Catherine, many, many years before, and when our girls were small we would go there with them and with her too. The day he came over to my apartment to ask me to go with him to Grand Cayman, he had shaved off his huge mustache and also cut his full white hair very short―and only later did I realize this must have been a result of Lois Bubar’s not wanting to see him plus everything he had learned about his mother. He was seventy-one years old then, but he, kind of, I think, must have been plunged into some sort of midlife crisis, or older man crisis, with the loss of his much younger wife moving out and taking their ten-year-old daughter, and then his half-sister’s not wanting to see him and his finding out that his mother had not been who he’d thought she had been.
So I did that: I went to Grand Cayman with him for three days in early October.
And it was odd, but nice. We had separate rooms, and we were kind to each other. William seemed more reticent than usual, and it was strange for me to see him without his mustache. But there were times when he threw his head back and really laughed. There was a politeness to us that was consistent; so it was a little strange, but nice.
But when we got back to New York, I missed him. And I missed David, my second husband, who had died.
I really missed them both, David especially. My apartment was so quiet!
？
I am a novelist and I had a book coming out that fall, and so after our trip to Grand Cayman I had a great deal of traveling to do around the country and I did it; this was in late October. I was also scheduled to go to Italy and Germany in the beginning of March, but in early December―it was ...kind of odd―I just decided I was not going to go to those places. I never cancel book tours and the publishers were not happy, but I was not going to go. As March approached someone said, “Good thing you didn’t go to Italy, they’re having that virus.” And that’s when I noticed it. I think that was the first time. I did not really think about it ever coming to New York.
But William did.
ii
It turned out that the first week in March, William had called our daughters, Chrissy and Becka, and asked―begged―them to leave the city; they both lived in Brooklyn. “And don’t tell your mother yet, but please do this. I will deal with her.” And so they hadn’t told me. Which is interesting because I feel that I am close to our girls, I would have said closer to them than William is. But they listened to him. Chrissy’s husband, Michael, who is in finance, really listened, and he and Chrissy made arrangements to go to Connecticut to stay in the house of Michael’s parents―his parents were in Florida, so Chrissy and Michael could stay in their house―but Becka balked, saying that her husband did not want to leave the city. Both girls said they wanted me to know what was going on, and their father said to them, “I’ll take care of your mother, I promise, but get out of the city now.”
A week later William called me and told me this, and I was not frightened but I was confused. “They’re actually leaving?” I said, meaning Chrissy and Michael, and William said yes. “Everyone is going to be working from home soon,” he said, and again I did not really understand it. He added, “Michael has asthma, so he should be especially careful.”
I said, “He doesn’t have terrible asthma, though,” and William paused and then said, “Okay, Lucy.”
Then he told me that his old friend Jerry had the virus and was on a ventilator. Jerry’s wife also had the virus, but she was at home. “Oh Pill, I’m so sorry!” I said, yet I still did not get it, the importance of what was happening.
It’s odd how the mind does not take in anything until it can.
The next day William called and said that Jerry had died. “Lucy, let me get you out of this city. You’re not young, and you’re scrawny and you never exercise. You’re at risk. So let me pick you up and we’ll go.” He added, “Just for a few weeks.”
“But what about Jerry’s funeral?” I asked.
William said, “There will be no funeral, Lucy. We’re in a―a mess.”
“Where out of the city?” I asked.
“Out of the city,” he said.
I told him I had appointments, I was supposed to see my accountant, and I was supposed to get my hair done. William said I should call my accountant and get an earlier appointment and to cancel my hair and to be ready to leave with him in two days.
I could not believe that Jerry had died. I mean that sincerely, I could not believe it. I had not seen Jerry in many years, and maybe that was why I was having trouble. But that Jerry had died: I could not get it into my head. He was one of the first people to die of the virus in New York City; I did not know that at the time.
But I got an earlier appointment with my accountant, and also for my hair, and when I went to my accountant’s office I took the small elevator up: It always stops at every floor, he is on the fifteenth floor, and people squeeze in holding their paper coffee cups and then look down at their shoes until they get off, floor by floor. My accountant is a large, burly man, my age exactly, and we have always loved each other; it may sound a little strange, because we do not socialize, but he is one of my favorite people in a way, he has been so deeply kind to me over these many years. When I walked into his office he said “Safe distance,” waving to me, and so I understood then that we would not hug as we always do. He joked about the virus, but I could tell he was nervous about it. When we were through with our meeting he said, “Why don’t you go down the freight elevator, I can show you where it is. You’ll be alone on it.” I was surprised and I said, Oh no, there was no need for that. He waited a moment, and then he said, “Okay. Bye-bye, Lucy B,” blowing me kisses, and I went down in the regular elevator to the street. “See you at the end of the year,” I said to him; I remember saying that. And then I took the subway downtown to get my hair done.
I have never liked the woman who colors my hair―I had adored the first woman who colored it for years, but she moved to California―and the woman who took over, I just never liked her. And I did not like her that day. She was young and had a small child, and a new boyfriend, and I understood that day that she did not like her child, she was cold, and I thought: I am never coming back to you.
I do remember thinking that.
When I got home to my building I met a man in the elevator who said he had just gone to the gym on the second floor but the gym was closed. He seemed surprised about this. “Because of the virus,” he said.
？
William called me that night and said, “Lucy, I’m picking you up t
엘리자베스 스트라우트 [저]
1956년 1월 6일 미국 메인 주 포틀랜드에서 태어나, 메인 주와 뉴햄프셔 주의 작은 마을에서 자랐다. 어린 시절부터 글쓰기에 매료된 스트라우트는 일상의 소소한 일들을 노트에 적고, 도서관의 문학 코너를 좀처럼 떠나지 않는 아이였다. 작가가 되겠다는 열망으로 유명한 작가들의 이야기나 그들의 자서전을 탐독하기도 했다. 집 밖에서도 많은 시간을 보냈던 이 소녀는 바닷가 바위를 뒤덮은 해초와 야생화를 숨기고 있는 뉴햄프셔의 숲을 보며, 자연에 대한 깊은 애정을 품게 된다. 엘리자베스 스트라우트는 베이츠 대학에서 영문학을 전공한 뒤 영국으로 건너가 일 년 동안 바에서 일하면서 글을 쓰고, 그후 다시 미국으로 돌아와 끊임없이 소설을 썼지만 원고는 거절당하기 일쑤였다. 작가가 되지 못하리라는 두려움에 그녀는 시러큐스 대학교에서 법학을 전공하고 잠시 법률회사에서 일했지만, 얼마 지나지 않아 일을 그만두고 뉴욕으로 돌아와 글쓰기에 매진한다. 문학잡지 등에 단편소설을 발표하던 스트라우트는 1998년 첫 장편 '에이미와 이사벨'을 발표하며 작품성과 대중성을 동시에 인정받는다. 이 작품은 오렌지상, 펜/포크너 상 등 주요 문학상 후보에 올랐고, '로스앤젤리스 타임스 아트 세덴바움 상'과 '시카노 트리뷴 허트랜드상'을 수상했다. 2008년 세번째 장편 '올리브 키터리지'를 발표하고 언론과 독자들의 호평을 받은 뒤, 이 작품으로 2009년 퓰리처상을 수상했다. "작가가 되겠다면 포기하지 말며, 포기할 수 있다면 포기하되, 그럴 수 없다면 계속 글을 쓰고 좋아하는 작가들의 작품을 필사하며 습작을 게을리하지 말라"고 조언하는 스트라우트는 존 치버와 존 업다이크를 좋아하며 육필 원고를 고집한다고 한다.
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알아두세요!!!
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;)
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상품은 유통특성상 인터파크에서 재고를 보유하지 않은 상품으로
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