And just when it appears things can't get any worse, Amy's sexuality begins to unfold, causing a vast and icy rift between mother and daughter that will remain unbridgeable unless Isabelle examines her own secretive and shameful past.Ī Reader's Guide is included in the paperback edition of this powerful first novel by the author who brought Olive Kitteridge to millions of readers. That they eat, sleep, and work side by side in the gossip-ridden mill town of Shirley Falls-a location fans of Strout will recognize from her critically acclaimed novel, The Burgess Boys-only increases the tension. At the heart of the book are the deep human connections that unite us even when we’re apart. In most ways, Isabelle and Amy are like any mother and her 16-year-old daughter, a fierce mix of love and loathing exchanged in their every glance. With her trademark spare, crystalline prose, Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout follows the indomitable heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton through the early days of the pandemic in her new novel, Lucy by the Sea. 'A novel of shining integrity and humor, about the bravery and hard choices of what is called ordinary life.'-Alice Munro Pulitzer Prize winning author Elizabeth Strout's bestselling and award winning debut, Amy and Isabelle-adapted for television by Oprah Winfrey- evokes a teenager's alienation from her distant mother-and a parent's rage at the discovery of her daughter's sexual secrets. She makes us care about these extraordinary ordinary people and makes us hope that they will find a way out of their often self-imposed emotional exile.Before there was Olive Kitteridge, there was Amy and Isabelle. As she does so, she reveals not only her deep affection for her characters, both serious and comic, but her profound wisdom about the human condition in general. Keeping Isabelle and Amy as the main focus of her sharp, sympathetic eye, Elizabeth Strout attends to them all. This conflict is surrounded by other large and small dramas in the town of Shirley Falls-a teenage pregnancy, a UFO sighting, a missing child, and the trials of Fat Bev, the community's enormous (and enormously funny and compassionate) peacemaker and amateur medical consultant.

Amy withdraws, too, and mother and daughter eat, sleep, and even work side by side but remain at a vast, seemingly unbridgeable distance from each other. In a fury, she lashes out at her daughter's beauty and then retreats into outraged silence. When discovered, this emotional and physical trespass brings disgrace to Amy's mother, Isabelle, and intensifies the shame she feels about her own past.

Amy Goodrow, a shy high school student in a small mill town, falls in love with her math teacher, and together they cross the line between understandable fantasy and disturbing reality. With compassion, humor, and striking insight, Amy and Isabelle explores the secrets of sexuality that jeopardize the love between a mother and her daughter.

Amy and isabelle by elizabeth strout