From Barnes & Noble
Elizabeth Strout's remarkably assured debut novel, Amy and Isabelle, is an exquisitely nuanced exploration of the complex relationship between a single mother and her teenage daughter. Shy, sensitive Amy Goodrow leads a cloistered existence with her mother, Isabelle, in a small New England mill town. For years, Isabelle has stoically endured the emotional emptiness of her life and unfulfilling secretarial job, secure in the knowledge that "her real life would happen somewhere else." But when Amy falls in love with her high school math teacher and crosses the line between adolescent fantasy and disturbing reality, she releases Isabelle's intense shame about her own past and opens an unbridgeable distance between them.
From the Publisher
"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
"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
"A novel of shining integrity and humor, about the bravery and hard choices of what is called ordinary life." --Alice Munro
"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
Mademoiselle
If you read one book all year, let it be this exquisite first novel.
New Yorker
Unflaggingly engaging...What a pleasure to gain entry into the world of this book.
Vanessa V. Friedman
...[I]n Strout's sure hands[the central revelatory] truth isn't awful butin factrevelatory. —Entertainment Weekly
Time Magazine
Strout's insights into the complex psychology between [mother and daughter] result in a poignant tale about two comings of age.
Jeff Giles
Lovely, powerful. —Newsweek
Laura Jamison
...[A]n impresive debut novel....Strout writes with abundant warmth...
— People Magazine
From The Critics
...[A] poignant, compassionate and insightful tale...
Publishers Weekly
Stories of young women who suffer the sexual advances of an authority figure (in this case, a high school math teacher) seem ubiquitous these days. But in Strout's gently powerful, richly satisfying debut, the damage shows less within the heart of the teenaged girl in question than in the wreckage of the previously tranquil relationship she had enjoyed with her mother. Amy Goodrow, 16, is the shy only child of Isabelle, a single mother. Isabelle's shame over the secret of her daughter's illegitimacy and her hunger for respectability keep her painfully isolated from the community of the New England mill town where she has made her home. Even before Amy's relations with her teacher become known, her beauty and her burgeoning sexuality arouse uncomfortable feelings of competitiveness in Isabelle, as well as dread at the prospect of her daughter's flight from Isabelle's carefully constructed nest. Amy, meanwhile, is in love; Strout lays out her teacher's charms as clearly as his caddishness, and her portrait of a young woman stumbling on the shattering power of lust--her own and others'--balances delicacy with frankness and breathtaking acuity. In the end, it is Isabelle who stays with the reader; devastated by her daughter's betrayal, riven with regrets over a life left largely unlived, she must somehow make amends to herself.
KLIATT
It's an oppressively hot summer in the small New England town of Shirley Falls, and prim Isabelle and her self-conscious sixteen-year-old daughter Amy both feel trapped, by the heat and by their relationship. Not only do they live together but they are also working together in the office of a mill, although they can hardly stand the sight of each other. Amy had fallen in love with her math teacher, and when Isabelle's boss discovers them in the throes of passion in a car, Isabelle learns of their relationship and the teacher leaves town. Neither Amy nor Isabelle can forgive the other, until Isabelle finally breaks out of her shell, befriends her office mates, and reveals her own shameful secrets from her past. This exquisitely written first novel is a close and loving examination of the relationship between a mother and a daughter as they both come of age. The characters are wonderful, from Isabelle's kind coworker Fat Bev (she issues advice like "marry a man whose mother is dead") to Amy's foul-mouthed pregnant friend Stacy. For mature teens who can appreciate both Amy's and Isabelle's perspectives. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 1998, Vintage/Random House, 306p, 21cm, 98-19995, $13.00. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: Paula Rohrlick; May 2000 (Vol. 34 No. 3)
Library Journal
When Amy Goodrow falls in love with her high school math teacher, and the two are subsequently found parked on a lonely road together, her relationship with her mother, Isabelle, is changed forever. This mother-daughter novel tells the story of how Isabelle Goodrow escaped her past and moved to a small town with her daughter, telling everyone her husband and family were dead. While focusing on the relationship between the women, Strout also explores the lives of others in Shirley Falls: Dottie Brown and Fat Bev, Isabelle's co-workers at the mill; Stacy Burros, Amy's best friend; and women from Isabelle's church. Strout's first novel reveals her ability to create characters who are both interesting and believable. Her attention to the detail of everyday life resembles that of Alice Munro and Anne Tyler. Stephanie Roberts reads with clarity, capturing the personality of each character; the tape quality is excellent. Recommended for popular fiction collections.--Nancy Ives, SUNY at Geneseo Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
The New Yorker
Unflaggingly engaging...What a pleasure to gain entry into the world of this book.
San Francisco Chronicle
This first-time novelist is destined for great things....Stunning.
Laura Jamison
...[A]n impresive debut novel....Strout writes with abundant warmth... -- People Magazine
Vanessa V. Friedman
...[I]n Strout's sure hands, [the central revelatory] truth isn't awful but, in fact, revelatory. -- Entertainment Weekly
Jeff Giles
Lovely, powerful. -- Newsweek
Suzanne Berne
Evocative...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
Kirkus Reviews
A lyrical, closely observant first novel, charting the complex, resilient relationship of a mother and daughter. Isabel Goodrow had settled in the mill town of Shirley Falls when her daughter Amy was an infant, reluctantly admitting to those who asked that both her husband and her parents were dead. Amy has grown up knowing little about her father and, thanks to her closeness to Isabel, also knowing little about the rough give-and-take of life. Now, Amy's innocence is under assault from various quarters, and her mother finds herself losing touch with the daughter who has been the focus of her existence. Amy, at 16, has a poised, delicate beauty, and finds herself-at first with alarm, then with a barely suppressed excitement—responding to the flirtations of a new teacher. Part of the novel's power derives from Strout's ability to set Amy and Isabel's painful struggles within the larger context of a small town. Some elements of the life there seem timeless: the steady flow of gossip, the invisible but nonetheless rigid social hierarchies, the ancient disruptions of life (illness, adultery, violence). New elements, however, signal a darker time: UFOs have been sighted, and a young girl is missing and may have been abducted. Strout nicely interweaves these elements within the record of Amy and Isabelle's increasingly charged relationship. She catches, with an admirable restraint, and particularity, Amy's emergent sense of self, the wild succession of emotions in adolescence, and Amy's stunning discovery of sex. She also renders a wonderfully nuanced portrait of Isabelle, a bright, often angry woman who has only imperfectly replaced passion with stoicism. Matters come to a headwhen Amy and her teacher are discovered in compromising circumstances, and when members of her father's family suddenly get in touch. In less sure hands, all of this would seem merely melodramatic.
