Elizabeth Strout

Ron Charles of The Washington Post summarized her book by saying: "as she did in her bestselling debut, Amy and Isabelle, Strout sets her second novel in a small New England town, whose natural beauty she returns to again and again as this tale unfolds against the background of the Cold War tensions of the 1950s."

The New Yorker welcomed the novel with a positive review: "with superlative skill, Strout challenges us to examine what makes a good story—and what makes a good life."

Goodreads rated the novel 3.75 stars out of 5.

Elizabeth Strout (born January 6, 1956) is an American novelist and author.

She is widely known for her works in literary fiction and her descriptive characterization.

She was born and raised in Portland, Maine, and her experiences in her youth served as inspiration for her novels–the fictional "Shirley Falls, Maine" is the setting of four of her nine novels.

In 1982, she graduated with honors, and received a J.D. degree from the Syracuse University College of Law.

That year her first story was published in New Letters magazine.

Strout moved to New York City, where she waitressed and began developing early novels and stories to little success.

She continued to write stories that were published in literary magazines, as well as in Redbook and Seventeen.

She enrolled in Law School at Syracuse University, and practiced law for six months before a funding cut ended her job as a Syracuse legal-services advocate.

Strout's first novel, Amy and Isabelle (1998), met with widespread critical acclaim, became a national bestseller, and was adapted into a movie starring Elisabeth Shue.

While teaching part-time at Borough of Manhattan Community College, Strout worked for six or seven years to complete her book Amy and Isabelle, which when published was shortlisted for the 2000 Orange Prize and nominated for the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction.

Amy and Isabelle was adapted as a television movie, starring Elisabeth Shue and produced by Oprah Winfrey's studio, Harpo Films.

Her second novel, Abide with Me (2006), received critical acclaim but ultimately failed to be recognized to the extent of her debut novel.

Abide with Me was published in 2006 by Random House to further critical acclaim.

Strout was a National Endowment for the Humanities lecturer at Colgate University during the fall semester of 2007, where she taught creative writing at both the introductory and advanced levels.

She was also on the faculty of the master of fine arts (MFA) program at Queens University of Charlotte in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Two years later, Strout wrote and published Olive Kitteridge (2008), to critical and commercial success, grossing nearly $25 million with over one million copies sold as of May 2017.

Strout's third book, Olive Kitteridge, was published two years later in 2008.

The book featured a collection of connected short stories about a woman and her immediate family and friends on the coast of Maine.

Emily Nussbaum of The New Yorker called the short stories "taciturn, elegant."

The novel won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

The book was adapted into a multi Emmy Award-winning mini series and became a New York Times bestseller.

In 2009, it was announced that the novel won the year's Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

The book became a New York Times bestseller and won the Premio Bancarella Award, at an event held in the medieval Piazza della Repubblica in Pontremoli, Italy.

Louisa Thomas, writing in The New York Times, said:"The pleasure in reading Olive Kitteridge comes from an intense identification with complicated, not always admirable, characters. And there are moments in which slipping into a character’s viewpoint seems to involve the revelation of an emotion more powerful and interesting than simple fellow feeling—a complex, sometimes dark, sometimes life-sustaining dependency on others. There’s nothing mawkish or cheap here. There’s simply the honest recognition that we need to try to understand people, even if we can’t stand them."

Five years later, she published The Burgess Boys (2013), which became a national bestseller.

The Burgess Boys was published on March 26, 2013, to further critical acclaim.

In an interview with Terry Gross in January 2015 she said of the experience, "law school was more of an operation, I think."

My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016) was met with international acclaim and topped the New York Times bestseller list.

She stated in a 2016 interview with The Morning News,"I wanted to be a writer so much that the idea of failing at it was almost unbearable to me. I really didn’t tell people as I grew older that I wanted to be a writer—you know, because they look at you with such looks of pity. I just couldn’t stand that."

Lucy Barton later became the main character in Strout's 2017 novel, Anything is Possible, a collection of linked stories about the town Lucy Barton came from, although Lucy only appears briefly in the book.

A sequel to Olive Kitteridge, titled Olive, Again, was published in 2019.

Oh, William! a third Lucy Barton novel was published in October of 2021.

She won the Siegfried Lenz Prize in 2022.

A fourth novel in the series, Lucy by the Sea was published in 2022.

Strout was born in Portland, Maine, and was raised in small towns in Maine and Durham, New Hampshire.

Her father was a science professor, and her mother was an English professor and also taught writing in a nearby high school.

After graduating from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, she spent a year in Oxford, England, followed by studies at law school for another year.