Amy and Isabelle

What Wonderful Writing

I read the Pulitzer Prize winning "Olive Kitteridge" and was quite impressed. After reading "Amy and Isabelle," I now rate Elizabeth Strout as one of my favorite writers. She writes with such seemingly simply details, and yet the words are evocative.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Nice character study.

This is the story of a single mother and her daughter. Sure, it seems simple enough, and actually the book was quite simple. It covers a single year, but an important one. The sexual awakening of the younger Goodrow, the quest for self-improvement of the elder. There is hardly any dialogue in this book, but a lot of thought processes between the two main characters. It was very honest, and I loved reading Isabelle's thoughts as she tried to read Shakespeare following an embarrassing encounter with her daughter. Amy didn't capture my interest nearly as well as her mother. I thought that the author did a fantastic job with her character, especially with Isabelle's quest for acceptance. I recommend this one.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Who Reads This Stuff?

Could be the most predictable, hackneyed piece of treacle ever written. Every thought and event is telegraphed pages ahead, and the only emotion remaining at the end is THANK GOD ITS OVER. I only read it because my wife made me, and she didn't like it either. Save your money.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

A REMARKABLY ASSURED DEBUT

With Amy and Isabelle, a compellingly told mother/daughter tale, Elizabeth Strout makes her literary debut. We can only hope there are many encores for this first-time novelist who relates her story with resonant assurance. When this is coupled with Ms. Strout's balanced compassion for her characters and her sharp eye for the precise telling detail, Amy and Isabelle becomes a work to be admired and savored. Isabelle Goodrow and her 16-year-old daughter, Amy, make their home in a small New England mill town, Shirley Falls. This is a lugubrious community where in the hot summer that Amy turns 16 and comes to dislike the sight of her mother, the river is 'just a dead brown snake of a thing lying flat through the center of town.' Their rented house is in an area called the Basin, where many blue collar workers live. Isabelle, a tentative woman who wears her hair in a flat French twist and works in the office room of the mill, would never dream of buying that house because she 'could not bear to stop thinking that her real life would happen somewhere else.' Hers was a solitary existence, save for Amy. Isabelle is aloof and easily wounded, hurt when the deacon's wife disapproves of the leaves Isabelle had used to decorate the church altar. And, she is proper, always sitting toward the rear of the sanctuary as her mother had taught her to do. This propriety, blended with Isabelle's innate fastidiousness made Amy's illegitimacy even more of a shameful secret. Amy, too, was reserved. She had but one friend, Stacy, with whom she shared cigarettes, candy bars, and confidences during school lunch hours. A good student with a love for poetry, Amy had long golden hair and a slim well-developed body which made her all the more self-conscious. During classes she would duck her head down, hiding her face behind her hair. When a substitute teacher, Mr. Robertson, teases her saying, 'Come on out, Amy Goodrow, everyone's been asking about you,' there is little indication of how Amy will respond. Yet respond she does as first she is puzzled and then exultant in the burgeoning sexuality that Mr. Robertson coaxes from her. They are, of course, discovered. The forced awareness of Amy's duplicity and also of her emerging womanhood is a devastating blow to Isabelle, who feels she has spent her life for naught. In fact, Isabelle feels as though she has died: 'Her `life' went on. But she felt little connection to anything, except for the queasiness of panic and grief.' And Amy, too, feels betrayed as she realizes that Mr. Robertson has used rather than cared for her. '.....ever since she found his number disconnected, found out that he had gone away; she could not stop her inner trembling.' With Amy and Isabelle Ms. Strout has proven herself to be a considerably gifted writer. She has drawn vividly erotic scenes, and deftly limned some of life's most tender moments. There is every indication that she well understands and cares deeply for the characters she has created.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

I loved this book and could not put it down!

I couldn't wait to find out how this one was gonna end!

This is a Wierd Book

This book was different than any book I have ever read. It was dark and spooky. I kept on reading, I don't really know why,I needed to find the end. The two main characters were wierd, slow witted and just plain crazy. I didn't like how the other characters were discribed, one was fat, another was a chain smoker, one was abused and another has female surgery and was wasting away.I never really knew in what time period this was written in. A male teacher having sex with a student age 15 and was not reported.

You know these people!

I found the characters in the story so very real and rich. This is not a story that takes you roaring to a dramatic turn but I felt a part of these characters, felt a part of the complicated small town landscape that the author creates for us. A very good read!

The Book that Sucked me In

Amy and Isabelle is one of the best written books I personally have ever read. This is one of those books that sucks you in. You can't put it down until you've read from cover to back. Elizabeth Strout has done a fantastic job writing this book so it relates to the struggles teenage girls have with their mothers. Amy and Isabelle have a tough relationship between them after Amy makes some sexual mistakes with her math teacher. Amy deals with the problems of talking to her mother, like most girls her age. Isabelle lets her past get in the way of her relationship with her daughter. The author makes you wonder about all the past experiences that has happened between this mother and daughter until an emotional conclusion. Strout also does a great job of telling this story from both sides. Neither one of the girls is necessarily right, and you can feel for both of them. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the struggles between a mother and daughter.

The Book That Ate My Life

Amy and Isabelle was written less than ten years ago, but the elegant style and word choice makes it feel as though it was written fifty years ago. The content is so deep and insightful, that it's one of those books that you can't just spend a lazy weekend indulging in, because it makes you think because it's REAL. The things that happen in this book, the feelings that the characters carry in their hearts, these are things that are actually realistic. Isabelle and Amy have a difficult,complex mother-daughter relationship, but they are also individual people, and they have trouble caring for themselves and each other at the same time. Isabelle has pushed her conservative values and etiquette onto Amy so much that Amy is shy, timid, and naive and when her substitute math teacher Mr. Robertson helps her explore a mature, sexual, and intellectual side of herself that she's never let out before, she falls into an unhealthy, emotionally dependant relationship with him. And when Isabelle discovers this, she is not only disappointed as a mother, but frustrated and confused as a person because she's been through a similar situation in the past, a situation that is merely hinted at until an emotional scene towards the end of the book. The author explores the deepest thoughts and desires of her characters, even ones they wouldn't dare vocalize. In another customer review, Wikiola said something about how both sides of this story, Amy's and Isabelle's, are equally represented. You don't side with one or the other. Elizabeth Strout shows us that both of their actions, even the most disgusting and evil, are perhaps not justifiable, but at least understandable. In the end, you truly feel for these two people, and hope that they can find a functional way to show the love they both have for each other. I would recommend it to anyone who wants a mentally and emotionally stimulating read.

A Great Read

I enjoyed this book very much and have, in fact, passed it on to two friends! The characters were great and the relationship between Amy and Isabelle was wonderful to read about. I'd definitely recommend this one.

Amy and Isabelle: A Novel

If you're a teenage daughter you may like this book. It has many real life situations that can happen in a mother-daughter relationship. When reading this book you get inside the characters and really get to know their feelings. A lot of times mothers can be way over-protective but if they are it's because they want the best for you and have more experience in life.

Amy and Isabelle: A Novel

This book would be a good book to read if you like to read about things that may acctually happen between a mother/daughter relationship. I was really suprised in many things the writer wrote in this book because not many writers write like this. In this story you really get to know the characters and know more about their life. I think that if you are a young girl, you will learn some lessons and values from this book.

Mother and Daughter Relationships

I first heard of Amy and Isabelle from ABC's Oprah Winfrey presents movie. I watched it and it immediately became my favorite movie. Then later on, while visiting the website, I found out there was also a book that the movie was based on. I loved the book a lot. It's very well written and mother-daughter books are the best. I like how they show both sides of the story so that you don't automatically side with the daughter and say that Isabelle is wrong, or with Isabelle and say that Amy is wrong. It's a really good book and I highly recommend it.

Well thought out

I bought this book after I watched the made for TV movie, and enjoyed it as much as the movie. The writing style was great, characters well thought out and developed. You must read this great novel!

Not a bad story, but drags quite a bit at the end

The first half of the story was pretty good. You got to know the characters and there was a lot of conflict. However, the author could have stopped the story after chapter 14. The rest of the book seemed to be filler and went on and on and on and on.....

Its moving, its real life, you love and hate with the charactors

This book is real life, I have known people like Amy and Isabelle. I 'felt' for these charactors, their aches and their triumphs seemed so real. It was sad, but I think mother and daughter went on in their lives and become happy. I don't have a daughter, but if I did I would never force things on her. Her mother was just jealous of the experiences of the daughter, and the mothers act of force just made it look like she disapproved. She was a hipocrate, but she felt she was doing what she had to do. I would read this again even! Great read!

nice`

it was a story about relationships very nicely put together. relationships that hurt us, that make us feel good, etc. relationships with parents, friends, teachers. it about life and how simple and complicated it can be at the same time.

a touching story

This was a very touching story about a strange eccentric mother and her even stranger daughter. The novel was unique and different from every other book I have read. I though it was a great first novel and I can't wait until her next!

The best book I have read all year!

Amy & Isabelle is a shining, transcendent novel, one that captures the struggles of mothers and daughters in a manner that is both accurate and riveting. If you read nothing else, read this book and then send it to everyone you know who loves great books. A stunner, so beautifully written that it takes your breathe away.

God, let us have mercy on ourselves

A beautifully writtenbook about the ways in which women ruin their lives by not forgiving themselves for their mistakes, especially sexual ones. That redemption is in confession to other women is refreshing (no shrinks, no authority figures to account to). The male figures are too flat. Their stories, short and sweet, are that they were ruined by women: the teacher's mother was an alcoholic, the filandering husband didn't get enough nooky at home. Most of the men have no story: the kindly pharmacist, Amy's birth father, the father of the child given up for adoption, their motivation is kept from us. Therefore, this wonderful work is flawed by being another male-bashing women's chronicle, with Woman as Victim of Men as the main character in many forms.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.