Culture Writer Hannah Dalgliesh delves into the work of contemporary American author Elizabeth Strout
“The books brought me things. This is my point. They made me feel less alone.”
– Elizabeth Strout, My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016)
So it goes with Elizabeth Strout. I am always amazed by this author, who not only writes so prolifically and experimentally, but whose understanding of her place as an author seems to fill the crevices of every line; never showy, but running nevertheless in the pulse of her words.
Made popular by Olive Kitteridge (2008), which won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize, Strout has written nine books to date and each one is as absorbing as the next. I feel that she is one of the best contemporary writers in the world, second only to the late Toni Morrison. Her writing is of the highest calibre: you open the first page to descriptions of Portland, Maine, and with each page find parts of yourself peeled away like an onion. The skin underneath is raw and waiting for Strout’s writing.
No one writes about family, marriage, and trauma as well as Strout
Olive Kitteridge tells the story of the eponymous retired maths teacher, grumpy and sick of life. Irritable, unlikeable, and often unreasonable, I wasn’t sure I would find anything of worth in Olive’s life, but I was wonderfully surprised. I read the first chapter in a kind of trance, utterly absorbed in the deliberateness of her life, the small-town claustrophobia of her neighbours, and the pull of the sea. The book is a quiet kind of masterpiece, and I came to care deeply for Olive and her husband; when the book ended, I was bereft without them. The story ruminates deeply and beautifully on the nature of human existence, of the meagre things we stay alive for, and the events which pull us into the centre of ourselves like collapsing stars. If you are looking to start with Elizabeth Strout, this is the perfect way in.
Her 1998 debut, Amy and Isabelle, has garnered less critical attention, which is unfortunate because it is superb. A deeply depressing book about shame and grief, it follows a mother named Isabelle who fights to contain her increasingly frantic teenage daughter, Amy, who is in the throes of an affair with her teacher. Rebellious Amy is horrified – disturbed, even – by her mother’s very presence. This book examines the worst of what we are capable of and what it means to be caught in the crossfire of someone who’s out of control.
By far my favourite, and I think Strout’s crowning piece of writing, is the Lucy Barton series. I read My Name Is Lucy Barton all in one day and felt thoroughly changed. The concept is deceptively simple: Lucy, writer and mother to two young daughters, is in hospital following surgery and is visited by her estranged mother. When she wakes to find her mother by her bedside, she is drawn back to the horrors and loves of her childhood. A story like this leaves both Lucy and the reader reeling.
Poverty, violence and literature have shaped Lucy. Her escapes are other people’s lives, and yet even in adulthood she feels anchored, or perhaps weighed down, by an unspoken – unspeakable, even – childhood which seems to live inside her skin. The story is short, precise, and flawless. No one writes about family, marriage, and trauma as well as Strout. Her prose is sparse yet filled with such attention to detail that it’s impossible to look away.
The magic of Elizabeth Strout lies in her ability to find the profound in the mundane
Within a year of Lucy Barton’s 2016 publication, its sequel Anything is Possible was published, and it is perhaps even more stunning and devastating, taking us back to the village in which Lucy grew up and excavating the lives of those around her before finally returning to her own life. The third book charts Lucy’s marriage to her first husband, while the fourth instalment, published only last year, follows Lucy as she navigates the Covid-19 pandemic. If anyone can cover such breadth of life and the worst of our collective history, it is Strout.
The magic of Elizabeth Strout lies in her ability to find the profound in the mundane. She transforms the quotidian into flashes of a life we can always see but never touch; the moments we want to intervene in and cherish; and the endless lapses of time that come in between these moments – the time which comes to dictate most of our lives, however much we wish otherwise. She notices the unnoticeable, and transforms single worlds into kaleidoscopes of human experience. Ranging from themes of grief, family, loss, and love to places, connections, and identity, there isn’t a single sentence wasted in Elizabeth Strout’s books.
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