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. Strout nicely interweaves these elements within the record of Amy and Isabelle's increasingly charged relationship.
New elements, however, signal a darker time: UFO's have been sighted, and a young girl is missing and may have been abducted. 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). 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. 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. 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 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. 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.
A lyrical, closely observant first novel, charting the complex, resilient relationship of a mother and daughter.
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