Amy and Isabelle, Elizabeth Strout
Amy and Isabelle, Elizabeth Strout
6 Rating(s)
List: $20.00 | Sale: $14.00
Club: $10.00

Amy and Isabelle

Author: Elizabeth Strout

Narrator: Stephanie Roberts

Unabridged: 11 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/12/2013


Synopsis

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The debut novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge evokes a teenager's alienation from her distant mother, and a parent's rage at the discovery of her daughter's secrets.

“One of those rare, invigorating books that take an apparently familiar world and peer into it with ruthless intimacy, revealing a strange and startling place.”—The New York Times Book Review

Before there was Olive Kitteridge, there was Amy and Isabelle…

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. 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. 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.

About The Author

Elizabeth Strout is the author of the New York Times bestseller 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. She lives in Maine and New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Mark on June 29, 2024

Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout was such a wonderful experience. I am finding it difficult to write this review, because I have so many feelings about both characters (Amy and Isabelle), it’s hard to know where to start. Strout has done her usual trick of building up her characters in front of o......more

Goodreads review by Barbara on October 06, 2022

4+ “All the love in the world couldn’t prevent the awful truth: You passed on who you were.” Mother and daughter relationships can be difficult during the teen years even in the best of circumstances. These relationships have increased difficulty when there is no father and/or no honesty. Enter sixtee......more

Goodreads review by Sandra on January 29, 2019

An excellent novel. The characters feel real, their emotions cleverly eked out and the social observations are sharp. Isabelle Goodrow moved to Shirley Falls with her baby daughter, Amy, 15 years earlier. She moved there to start afresh, knowing no one. The story is told by Isabelle & Amy during a s......more

Goodreads review by Susanne on January 03, 2021

Review also published to blog: [URL not allowed] Actions and Reactions. Secrets and Lies. Mothers and Daughters. Husbands and Wives. Isabelle Goodrow is a prim and proper woman. To her, appearances are everything. As a mother, she is quite reserved. Her daughter Amy longs for some......more

Goodreads review by Jennifer (Insert Lit Pun) on February 17, 2019

I find it somewhat obscene that this was a debut.......more


Quotes

"Strout's insights into the complex psychology bewteen [mother and daughter] result in a poignant tale about two coming of age." —Time

"Impressive....Strout writes with abundant warmth." —People

"Poignant...sensitively imagined...[Amy and Isabelle] recalls the elgegiac charm of Our Town." —The Christian Science Monitor

"Stunning....Every once in a while, a novel comes along that plunges deep into your psyche, leaving you breathless....This year that novel is Amy and Isabelle." —San Francisco Chronicle

"Excellent....Strout's collective portrait...remains unflaggingly engaging....[W]hat a pleasure to gain entry into the world of this book." —The New Yorker

"Lovely, powerful...a kind if modern 'Rapunzel.'" —Newsweek

"Amy and Isabelle is an impressive debut....with an expansiveness and inventiveness that is the mark of a true storyteller." —The Philadelphia Inquirer


Awards

  • Orange Prize