Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout.✔✔✔✔✔

Well, I just devoured this one! A mother-daughter story, Amy is 16, Isabelle is her mother, and the story takes place over the course of one summer, a summer which has begun with Isabelle's startling discovery that her daughter has become sexually involved with her math teacher at high school! There is no father, no siblings, and Isabelle, since their move to this small town, has made Amy the focus of her life. At the mill where she works, Isabelle has a secret crush on her employer, Avery Clark, and dreams of the day when they can be together, even though Clark gives no indication of any interest in her apart from their work together. When Amy's involvement with her teacher is discovered by Avery Clark, Isabelle is disgraced and yet, oddly, jealous of her daughter, envious that she has found someone to love her, envious of the attention she has received. This discovery is made even more harrowing by the punishment Isabelle inflicts on her daughter, a punishment which reflects this jealousy. The distance between them seems almost insurmountable until Amy makes a startling, traumatic discovery, and Isabelle nurtures her through this time.

The novel is rich with characters, most particularly other women from the mill like Fat Bev, the Mother Earth figure, Dottie Brown, whose husband leaves her after she has a hysterectomy, as well as the snotty church ladies who, at least in Isabelle's eyes, look down on her; Stacy, Amy's friend, whose father is having an affair with one of those snotty church ladies, and who is unrepentably pregnant and full of hate for her parents, plus the characters we never meet, like little Debby Dorne, and Jake Cunningham, Amy's real father.

This author obviously loves people, loves the ordinariness of their lives and predicaments, and writes with both humor, compassion, and power. At times, I found it hard to read, and found myself in tears, simply because it was so compelling a story.

Another big favorite this year, and one not easily forgotten.