How would you describe the tone of Lucy by the Sea?

Reflective. Melancholy. Hopeful. Insightful. How would you describe the tone of Lucy by the Sea, and why?

I felt that there was a bittersweet longing subsumed under a melancholy reflection threaded throughout the story, and that this tone never really changed. There were certainly moments of the highs and lows experienced through the unprecedented times of the story's setting, though under a sense of profound sadness.

One is very much "in her head", as the expression goes. But this is appropriate as we were all very much in our own heads during the lockdown. Also, as I recall, it is a similar voice to what we heard in the previous books featuring Lucy.

The tone was the tone of 2020, everything seemed to slow down, Yet life continued, people loved and hated, lived and died, people became more important to each other, while others didn't seem to care. The reader was in Lucy's head and inside their own heads reliving their 2020.

I think the tone was very subdued-as if Stout was writing through a state of profound shock at what happened in 2020. Reading Lucy By the Sea helped me look at how I may have been processing everything myself at the time-disbelief, anger, resignation, deep sadness, worry, fear, yet also joy, excitement, and gratitude. The book helped me see all the "smaller" things I have in my life and be grateful for them: waves crashing on the shore, a walk with a friend, a warm coat. Hmm... the small things are the big things, and before the pandemic I might have been taking a lot of them for granted.

I think it showed a revived appreciation for the outdoors and life’s other simple pleasures. No one knew exactly what was happening... life seemed to come to a standstill for everyone... including the characters in Lucy by the Sea.

I totally agree with renne’s response. In a word I felt the book was melancholy but having experienced the pandemic, it certainly made me revisit the feelings I had. It would be interesting to see how I would have responded to this question if Covid 19 had not actually happened but because it was not long ago (or forgotten) the book really stroked my emotions.

I think the tone is reflective. The pandemic caused us all to shelter in place like Lucy. We had time to rethink our pasts and slow down to appreciate and understand our present without all the hub and bub of our "normal" daily lives. I feel that like Lucy I got to know and see myself better--not always positively, for sure--but perhaps more honestly.

I agree with other reviewers..the tone was melancholy and reflective. This entire book made me look back on the pandemic. We stayed in isolation longer than some others due to auto-immune concerns.I definitely had too much time to think but also loads of time to read.

I agree that the book has a reflective and melancholy feel. But when I think about the previous Lucy books, I would say the same about them. This may be more so due to the pandemic, but I also think that is a characteristic of Lucy and all of her memoirs. I think it is a beautiful voice by the way. I hope that I would be friends with her.

I definitely agree that that the tone was reflective a great deal through the entire novel, but there were also reactions that felt very real that were tied to the moment, too... Lucy's remarks like, "I remember that." We all went through the pandemic as a society, but before the testing and shots and the eventual lessening of deaths and cases it felt very fearful because we couldn't gauge much because everything was so unknown. When Lucy said, "I remembered it that way" she was looking back, but her accounts of what happened seemed very in the moment to me.

Everyday. About nothing and about everything. Reflective. What I loved about the book is it's ability to talk about normal everyday things and then zoom all the way out and all the way back in to what's important to notice.