Amy and Isabelle was written by Elizabeth Strout and is a national bestseller.
It is the story of a mother and her daughter and the journey of their relationship. This story is packed with all of the elements that make a spectacular read: scandal, love, hate, jealousy, betrayal and sexuality.

The main characters are, of course, Amy and Isabelle. Isabelle is the mother to Amy and they have lived in Shirley Falls for as long as Amy can remember. Isabelle is a quiet woman who chooses to keep to herself. Her self-imposed isolation stems from the fact that she feels she is better than the mill workers who are her colleagues, but she can't quite get accepted by the small town's elite crowd of deacon's wives. Being friendly does not come naturally and being proper is her defense mechanism. An anal-retentive heroine is always a recipe for disaster.

Amy is the typical sullen teenager. When we first meet Amy, she's painfully unsure of herself and has a terrible self-image. As luck would have it, her math teacher falls ill and is replaced by a worldly gentleman who teaches Amy a bit more than math. We see Amy turn from a clumsy but innocent girl into a distrustful teen overnight.

The supporting characters are colorful and very much intrinsic to the story. Some have bigger impacts and others are nothing more than footnotes. We are, nonetheless, interested in them all.

Fat Bev is the most vocal of the secondary characters. She is the voice of reason among the troubled souls of Shirley Falls. She conjures the image of a female Buddha in her girth and in her wisdom.

Actually, I embraced every character of the book except for Amy. Isabelle is a little stiff for my liking, but I do understand her. At least she comes around in the end. I mentally had my nose turned up to Amy throughout the story and never did develop a liking for her. For some reason, that just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

The imagery of the book is beautiful. Strout describes the sleepy little town so well that you can think of a million different places that are just like it.

"...the sky was never blue, how it seemed instead that a dirty gauze bandage had been wrapped over the town, squeezing out whatever bright sunlight might have filtered down, blocking out whatever it was that gave things their color, and leaving a vague flat quality to hang in the air..."


I can particularly relate to the mill mentality. Strout describes the way a small town, whose livelihood depends on the local mill, works perfectly: the gossip, the infighting, and the fierce loyalty to one another. I've lived in nothing but small mill towns since I began adulthood and she could have been talking about any one of them.

If there are any negatives in this book, it would be that some of the stories are a bit incomplete. I really thought we'd here more from Isabelle's life long crush. It is also hinted at that something is terribly wrong with Bev, but nothing ever becomes of that, either. Some of those stories hit a dead end and there was potential there for a little more drama. Please do not let this small point deter you from a reading; the book more than makes up for these little overlooked endings.

I see on the cover of this book it says that Oprah Winfrey presents this movie on ABC. Don't see the movie before you read the book!

Important Information

ISBN: 0-375-70519-8

Cost: $13.00
(Free at your local library!)

Recommended: Yes