“The two characters that I have written who are older are Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton. It’s interesting because as I wrote them it was their character that was most important to me, and their age was simply a piece of that character. So even though I knew I was writing about older people I didn’t think about that in a way, except to make sure they were always who they were.”
The Guardian: Interview: There’s a quiet rumbling of violence in America.
“Strout describes her writing style as that of “an embroiderer” – “I will pick it up and embroider a little green line, and come back later and embroider a leaf or something” – and her novels, intricately and painstakingly crafted, overlap and intertwine to create an instantly recognisable fictional landscape.”
Lisa Allardice, “Interview: Elizabeth Strout: ‘There’s a quiet rumbling of violence in America. Is it going to expand and explode?,’” Books, The Guardian, September 24, 2022.Booker Prize Shortlist: Profile, Readers Guide, Extracts, Readings
“No-one writes interior life as Strout does. This is meticulous observed writing, full of probing psychological insight. Lucy Barton is one of literature’s immortal characters – brittle, damaged, unravelling, vulnerable and most of all, ordinary, like us all.”
Profile and collection of features including written interviews, an article on the Lucy Barton series, a Reading Guide (for bookclubs and individual readers), a video Q&A with readers, and two short videos featuring Anna Friel reading extracts from Oh William!
“Elizabeth Strout,” Authors, the Booker Prize Library, The Booker Prizes website, September 6, 2022.Booker Shortlist: Interview: 'I could feel myself getting better with each story'
“With Oh William! shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2022, we spoke to Elizabeth Strout about her intimate characterisation, the importance of listening and what’s next for Lucy Barton.”
“‘Elizabeth Strout interview: 'I could feel myself getting better with each story',” Features, The Booker Library, The Booker Prizes website, September 6, 2022.A Conversation with Elena Ferrante
The author of the Neapolitan quartet and the Pulitzer prize-winning novelist discuss identity, ambition, truth – and the ‘convulsive’ urge to write.
“Here is what I believe: it is the pressure between the lines of the text, and the pressure rising up from under the text, and the pressure that is running above the text, that gives the writing its meaning, it is the unwritten sitting right next to the written, which makes something go beyond the explanation of the team of experts. And this is what happens when you go outside the margins (if I understand you correctly) and it is this which is mysterious, that we aim for.”
“No matter how love for others and language as an act of love try continuously, insistently, desperately to get outside the margins of the suffocating first-person singular, we remain bodies organically enclosed in our isolation. Once I recognised this, I was convinced that the other can be truthfully described only through an “I” that is colliding and in the collision unravels.”
Elena Ferrante and Elizabeth Strout, “‘I felt different as a child. I was nearly mute’: Elena Ferrante in conversation with Elizabeth Strout,” The Guardian, March 5, 2022.