It is a familiar minor climax in our stories, leaving what we know and arriving in strange places, carrying little bits of jumbled luggage and suppressing secret and garbled ambitions. The past is always present in Lucy’s memories of her mother, father and siblings as is her desire in the present over her relationship with her daughters- not wanting it to be like her relationship with her mother. Lucy By The Sea holds its own as an engaging and relatable story, where human bonds of love and meaning — over-examined and frayed as they may become in crisis — still serve as the essence of what makes us feel we matter and belong. After a few other experiences hit a LITTLE too close to home (and the pain we all have lived and are living through) during the pandemic, I had essentially sworn off of COVID and pandemic related books. Critic Sissy Helff argues that By the Sea "is a fine example of a confrontation of readers with a highly complex picture of the predicament of refugees in the wake of movement and migration".

It is a story of love and betrayal, seduction and possession, and of a people desperately trying to find stability amidst the maelstrom of their times. How do we fit our original home into our new home and how do come to understand ourselves in this new place? It is a work of art, in the tradition of high modernism, and I'll bet it will still be read and admired in 75 years'. These are bad memories that I don’t like to revisit even with good friends, and I certainly don’t want to read about it in such detail in my fiction.

Chloe is shown as a volatile character: flagrantly kissing Max in a Cinema, rough-housing with her brother Myles, and what was hinted as hypersexuality earlier, is quite possibly confirmed as hypersexuality in the book's final moments.

And as with Ishmael, a voluntary marine refugee, exile has given Gurnah a perspective on the 'balance between things' that is astonishing, superb. Not everything or everyone is perfect, but life never is and Lucy is doing the best she can just like the rest of us. Independent and nonprofit, we believe in the power of collective reasoning and imagination to create a more just world.The strands mesh because in this novel we are traveling the memories and histories of the Indian Ocean. She has been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the International Dublin Literary Award, the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize. The selection of The Sea for the Booker Prize was a satisfying victory for Banville, as his novel The Book of Evidence was shortlisted in 1989 but lost to The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. Only when they make peace with their regrets, they can finally accept themselves and make sense of their past. COVID has just hit New York City, and Lucy’s ex, William, has whisked her off to Maine to hide out with her.