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    Amy & Isabelle
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    Amy & Isabelle
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    Amy & Isabelle
    Ebook411 pages7 hours

    Amy & Isabelle

    By Elizabeth Strout

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    From the Man Booker Prize longlisted author of My Name is Lucy Barton
    ?
    Isabelle Goodrow has been living in self-imposed exile with her daughter Amy for fifteen years. Shamed by her past and her affair with Amy's father, she has submerged herself in the routine of her dead-end job and her unrequited love for her boss. But when Amy, frustrated by her quiet and unemotional mother, embarks on an illicit affair with her maths teacher, the disgrace intensifies the shame Isabelle feels about her own past.

    Throughout one long, sweltering summer, as the events of the small town ebb and flow around them, Amy and Isabelle exist in silent conflict until a final act leads ultimately to the understanding they both crave.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster UK
    Release dateApr 12, 2013
    ISBN9781471128677
    Unavailable
    Amy & Isabelle
    Author

    Elizabeth Strout

    Elizabeth Strout is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Burgess Boys; Olive Kitteridge, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize; the national bestseller Abide with Me; and Amy and Isabelle, winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in London.

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    Reviews for Amy & Isabelle

    4/5

    64 ratings43 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Once again Strout's writing amazes. This is her debut novel and I wish I had read it when it first came out and had experienced the excitement of discovering such a brilliant voice. I will not summarize here, others have done so quite well. This book stands as an example of such superb writing that almost any page could be selected at random and used as a template for a Master Writing class. No wasted words, no cliches, no "telling", all "showing", fully developed characters, perfectly paced storytelling, coherent story lines...Strout brings it all to the table and so much more! Highly recommended for book clubs and discerning readers!
    • 5/5
      One of the best books I've read in a long time - the writing, the subject (the yearning of women, from both mother and daughter's POV), the author's rare ability to handle both omniscience and shifting points of view. Even the ending was excellent.
    • 4/5
      Intense mother/daughter relationship.
    • 3/5
      I have read all of Strout's books and this first novel by her was good but not up to the standards of her later books. The story of a single mother(with a past to hide) raising a teenage daughter in a small New England mill town in the late 60's or early 70's moved very slowly. It deals with issues of sexual exploitation, mother-daughter issues and co-worker relationships. It was written 25 years after the time it explores so the treatment of the workplace etc. reflects those times. The writing was good and the portrayal of the lives of the main characters allowed me to feel the sadness of their lives. However, the story dragged in the middle. Some better editing would have improved the boor, but if you have read all other Elizabeth Strout than by all means read this. Otherwise, start with Olive Kitteridge to see Strout at her best.
    • 4/5
      I liked the writing and the characters very much, but in the end the action was a bit predictable -- none of the depths and twists that surprised me all through Olive Kitteridge. Which is cool, it's the work of a younger writer etc., and she does get that agonizing mother-daughter dynamic just right. I wasn't disappointed, but neither were my socks knocked off -- but if I didn't have Olive to hold it up against I'd probably be more generous.
    • 4/5
      Strout is an amazing storyteller. She calls up three dimensional recollections and feelings we all share but don't, or cannot, put into words. Honest and real, very real!

      More than just a mother/daughter story, it is the coming of age for a middle-aged woman and the coming of age and sexual awakening of her young daughter. This creates the neccesary tension of the plot. Then she deftly weaves, with wonderful clarity, all of the characters of the small town around this.


      The cover of my paperback copy quotes a review from the San Francisco Chronicle - "Stunning...Heartbreaking...This novelist is destined for great things."

      Her book Olive Kitteridge won the Pulitzer for fiction this year. Enough said.

    • 4/5
      The story was very interesting and kept me engage. There was much realism to the characters, and I liked that not everything turned out well. However, the writing, while good, did not compare to Strout's writing in Olive Kitteridge.
    • 4/5
      Strout's characters are so well developed. The events are woven across time and it is not until the end that Isabelle's "secret" is completely revealed. However, the ending is a winding down rather than a culmination and is a bit disappointing.
    • 4/5
      A vivid tale of mother daughter angst. Set in a small New England town that has seen better days, everyone seems to be wrestling their way through lives that just aren't quite right.
    • 5/5
      Amy Goodrow, a shy high school student in a small mill town, falls in love with her math teacher, Thomas Robertson. What passes for a while as just a simple high school girl's secret crush, crosses from fantasy into reality when Thomas and Amy begin a secret love affair with each other. When this emotional and physical trespass is discovered, it brings disgrace to Amy's mother, Isabelle, and intensifies Isabelle's feelings of shame about her own past.Mother and daughter - whose relationship was initially extremely close - suffers an almost physical blow, as both Amy and Isabelle retreat into icy silence towards each other. Amid the minor problems faced by many of the citizens in Shirley Falls, Maine, Amy and Isabelle have a more private misery: an seemingly unbridgeable chasm has opened up between them and nothing will ever be the same again.I thought that this was a wonderful book, a superlative book. The characters were entirely believeable and the book was written with incredible feeling and attention to detail. In my opinion, Elizabeth Strout did an excellent job in getting into her characters heads and describing their motivations. I give this book an A+! and have placed two more books by Elizabeth Strout - Abide With Me and Olive Kitteridge on my Wish List.
    • 4/5
      Isabelle and Amy, mother and daughter, live in Shirley Falls, a small and quiet little town in Maine where apparently nothing much ever happens. But a lot of its people live in secret turmoil.Isabelle has had a crush on her married boss for more than 10 years and she feels her life is being wasted away, and secretly, even without daring to articulate the thought, she blames Amy, her 15 years old daughter. Amy has her own things to deal with. Brought up by her reclusive and unreachable mother, she doesn't have a lot of friends, until she meets her new maths teacher, Mr. Robertson, who starts seeing her for what she is. A very attractive young woman with "horny" needs.While Isabelle continues deliberately to see Amy as a child, her daughter starts a clandestine and passionate affair with her teacher, becoming more and more estranged from her mother in the process. Two strangers, mother and daughter, living a lie together.When Isabelle discovers what is going on, her made up life crumbles down and she has to face reality, a deep shock but also an opportunity to see the world for what it really is, and finally, to give it a chance to open up and dare to trust again.Strout masters her storytelling, mixing some touches of humour with and oppressing sense that something terrible is about to happen. You can feel the characters dreads, you understand all their point of views and suffer along with them. A very human story, could be considered a light reading but if you bother to look closely, you'll see a deeply thread psychological thriller which will touch your inner strings and make you sing mutely.Buying her next novel right now.
    • 4/5
      [Amy and Isabelle] was a mother/daughter story but also a depiction of the quiet agonies, disappointments and miscommunications of life told not only in the story of Amy and Isabelle but also their acquaintances.
    • 4/5
      Although the story of a single mom bringing up a teenage daughter has been written many times before, this book stands out with its vivid characters. The two title characters, Isabelle, the mother, and Amy, the daughter are brilliant, but the icing on the cake in this book is the supporting cast. Set in a small town in Maine where everyone knows everyone else's business, you meet and learn to love Fat Bev, who shares with everyone her problems with constipation, and the biology teacher who has a steamy affair with the high school principal, who has to hide his romantic escapades since he still lives with his mother. Although not as deep as her later books, Olive Kitteridge and The Burgess Boys, still VERY enjoyable.
    • 5/5
      I came upon reading this novel in a unique way. I first read and loved Olive Kitteridge and the unique style that Strout used to paint the portrait of that wonderful character. Then recently when Burgess Boys came out, I enjoyed the characters created in that as well. When reading reviews with the author, it was mentioned that Burgess Boys went back to that home town in Maine, first discovered in Amy and Isabelle. Perhaps, (it was hinted) the opening chapter of the Burgess Boys was in fact Amy talking on the phone with her mother. Well I had Amy and Isabelle on my shelf for years collecting dust because I judged it as a mother - daughter story that I might not need to read. So I picked it up and enjoyed getting to see Shirley Falls, Maine in the 60's , getting many great details about life in this close knit yet standoffish town where a mother and daughter's relationship is tested by the secrets they keep from each other. I would have to point out though that the men in this book or in Shirley Falls do not fair well.
    • 4/5
      The author does a wonderful job bringing each of her characters to life and making them believable.
    • 4/5
      Having recently read Olive Kitteridge I decided to read earlier books by Elizabeth Strout. I read about ten pages of Amy and Isabelle when I realized I had read this before. Generally this "forgetting" is not a good sign. However I decided to keep reading and am glad I did. Elizabeth Strout depicts the self-doubt and confusion of both mother and daughter as she depicts the interactions and thoughts of Amy (adolescent daughter) and Isabelle (mom). Amy and Isabelle misunderstand, dislike, love and react to each other with painful intensity; I cannot recall such a realistic portrait of the mother-daughter relationship in another book. Amy and Isabelle keep "missing" each other as each becomes increasingly caught up in their own pain and confusion. Isabelle, in trying to protect Amy, ends up alienating her and undermining what little sense of self Amy has. Amy appears without grounding or hope and finds the attention of men essential and yet destructive. Isabelle finally begins to cautiously seek friendship among her coworkers and this helps her release Amy from providing her own only source of companionship. This book is about the dreams that women have and how real life intrudes and sidetracks those dreams often in ways that bring unexpected grace and welcome connections.
    • 5/5
      A wonderful novel about girls growing up and how mothers try not to let their daughters make the same mistakes that they did. I was moved at times, incredibly frustrated at times, and completely identified with both characters. A great read.
    • 4/5
      Mother/daughter relationship in Strout's novel illustrates in the extreme just about all mother/daughter relationships. Well-drawn characters both major and minor. Some issues hit close to home and brought up memories both good and bad.
    • 5/5
      Absolutely stunning debut novel by the author of later novels such as "Olive Kittredge" & "My Name is Lucy Barton". This is the story of a single mother of an only daughter, age 16, set in a New England mill town during the 1960s. The reader is privy to the internal musings, hopes, sorrows and memories of both characters. Isabelle suffers watching her daughter come of age emotionally, sexually, and socially. Amy struggles with the developmental task of separating and finding her own identity, separate from her mother.Strout writes in an emotionally evocative prose. I felt so many deep emotions while reading that it is difficult to enumerate them. The subject of the novel is the primary theme of many novels that I have read, yet Elizabeth Strout's writing makes her novel stand out clearly from the crowd.
    • 4/5
      Amy and Isabelle arrived at a more satisfying conclusion than I expected it to as I was going along, but I was still fairly disappointed with it. The novel is carefully observed and the characters sharply drawn, but there is an air about the thing of a fiddly preciseness which sucks the life out of both the story and the prose. All elements of the plot--indeed, of the very sentences--slot together so cloyingly perfectly that no surprise, no joy, no anticipation, no heart, lives on the page. And life itself, in Amy and Isabelle, seems to be small, dreary, hopeless, and without joys. This is partly the point of Amy and Isabelle as characters, and there is some glimmer of hope of its lifting for Isabelle at least in the end. But by God does it make for wearisome, frustrating, teeth-grinding reading. Eat a cookie, Isabelle! Pick a flower! Do something. I do not expect, or even want, my books to be all teacups and rose petals, but I am suspicious when every character who populates a novel is less happy than everyone I know. People, whole towns, do not live like this, surely, not even in books? In my review of Prep the other week I said that I kept waiting for Lee to grow up, and I'm itching to say something to the same effect here about adolescent Amy and her (pathetic, blind, aching) love for (creepy, smarmy, hateful) Mr. Robertson. But maybe it's the opposite that we need. Grow down! Footie jimjams and adventures under the stairs for everyone! Be happy! And don't, for the love of all things holy, lose your faith in everyone. And eat a GD cookie.
    • 5/5
      Having read Olive Kitteridge and being amazed I decided to venture into another dark and brooding Elizabeth Strout novel and wasn't disappointed. This is a book of characters. There's the brooding, yearning daughter, the neurotic guilt-ridden mother, the sad, stalward office-mates and the mysterious, romantic yet cruel teacher. Every one bursting with life. Elizabeth Strout writes so beautifully it makes you wish you had a pen or pencil to underline certain passages. You can smell the fedit, yellow river running through town. You struggle with the impossible humid, scorched summer as it builds to a climax of nerves. Each word is the exact word and correctly placed. It's not offensively dramatic but helps to take the reader into a story he or she never knew was possible. No wonder she won the Pulitzer Prize.
    • 5/5
      What a great read about a repressed mother and daughter with some pretty good foreshadowing of her later book, Olive Kitteridge.
    • 4/5
      Review copied from my Orange January thread.I finished Amy and Isabelle last night. Not sure how to describe my initial feelings other than that it took me a while to 'get into it.' I didn't really identify with either the mother or the daughter at first. Frankly, the mother annoyed me in the beginning. BUT... as good books go, I ended up liking both characters, sympathizing with both and rooting for the happy ending. I also ended up reading swiftly through when I originally thought the book was quite slow going and just okay for me. Mother-daughter fiction usually makes me cry, but at least I didn't here! I wanted a reallllly happy ending for these two, but then again I'm the romantic sort who reads to escape reality and the mundane. So, if I were rating, I'd say Amy and Isabelle gets 4 to 4.5 stars from me.Not a very cerebral review, but there it is....
    • 2/5
      What a thoroughly depressing book. Elizabeth Strout is competent and some descriptions in the novel were perfect, so it isn't that it's badly written, just oh my god I never want to read this again. I'm sure I'm supposed to get a message of hope and find that friendship comes from the corners you least expect it to be lurking in or something but I just want to get the time I spent on Amy and Isabelle back.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this read, but I already knew the story because I'd watched the movie years ago. There is a coldness in the lives of Isabelle and her daughter, Amy, that Strout paints perfectly despite the summer heat that is described. Now that I've read this I would really like to read more by this author.
    • 3/5
      While reading Amy and Isabelle, I found that my feelings were varied. Sometimes I enjoyed the book, other times I found myself just reading it for the sake of finishing it. I wasn't content, yet not unhappy enough to put a halt to the reading. So, towards the end of the book, I was happy that I kept reading, but not for the book itself, but mostly because another book off my shelf has been read. Amy and Isabelle starts off a little slowly and really doesn't pick up until the middle. That's when I started enjoying it a little more because that's when I really couldn't put it down and did end up finishing it the same day it picked up. However, the slow start wasn't the kind of slow start where the author was building the scene, so to speak, it was just the sort of slow that just drags on and on and that had me putting the book down from time to time. If a book allows me to put it down and then be a bit ambivalent at picking it up, then I don't think it's necessarily doing its job. In Amy and Isabelle, the mother and the daughter are disconnected from each other and from the world. Elizabeth Strout did this a little too well because while reading the book, I felt disconnected from the characters. I was reading with a sense of detachment and I didn't really care about the characters. I cared about the overall problem, yes, but them individually, not so much. And then we have a slew of other characters who are taking up space and I really didn't care about them either. They seemed to have absolutely no purpose in this book. I gave Amy and Isabelle three stars because sometimes, it was extremely compelling and I really couldn't believe some of the things Isabelle did to Amy. However, the bad sort of dampened my enjoyment of the book. If this review sounds mildly confusing, then that's how I basically feel. I enjoyed the book, but not really...
    • 4/5
      Intense story of a mother/daughter relationship.
    • 4/5
      An excellently-written, poignant story about a relationship between mother and daughter. The daughter begins a sexual relationship with her teacher and the aftermath is infuriating, enlightening, and ultimately bonding.
    • 4/5
      An Oprah book that I probably would have cherished when I was about 16. Strout gives each of her characters a distinct and believable voice, most especially teenage Amy, who speaks a little and thinks a lot. It's a character-driven novel, which I like, but the character development is predictable almost from the first page. The weather-related symbolism is a bit heavy-handed but I could've lived with the too-neat ending...if only Strout hadn't also felt the need to spell out exactly what lessons we were supposed to learn from it.
    • 4/5
      A wonderful mother-daughter relationship story that brings in lots of outside characters which the author deftly develops. You really get to know these people. Mother Isabelle is a single mother bringing up daughter Amy in a New England mill town in the 60's. Amy is Isabelle's life and when she gets involved with her Math teacher, Isabelle is actually jealous of the relationship. She regrets that her love life is completely empty. The story revolves around this relationship, the office staff at the mill where Isabelle works, UFO sightings, a missing teenager and class struggles. Strout is a master at developing these themes and resolving, in the end, Amy and Isabelle's relationship. Excellent!