Elizabeth Strout

Author of Olive Kitteridge

18+ Works 28,099 Members 1,771 Reviews 55 Favorited

About the Author

Elizabeth Strout (born January 6, 1956) is an American author of fiction. She was born in Portland, Maine. After graduating from Bates College, she spent a year in Oxford, England. In 1982 she graduated with honors, and received both a law degree from the Syracuse University College of Law and a show more Certificate of Gerontology from the Syracuse School of Social Work. Strout wrote Amy and Isabelle over the course of six or seven years, which when published was shortlisted for the 2000 Orange Prize and nominated for the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. Amy and Isabelle was made into a television movie starring Elisabeth Shue and was produced by Oprah Winfrey's studio, Harpo Films. Strout was a NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) professor at Colgate University during the Fall Semester of 2007, where she taught creative writing. She was also on the faculty of the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte in Charlotte, North Carolina. In 2009 Strout was honored with a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Olive Kitteridge, a collection of connected short stories she wrote about a woman and her immediate family who lived on the coast of Maine. Strout also wrote The Burgess Boys in 2013 which made The New York Times Best Seller List. Ms. Strout's title, My name is Lucy Barton, made the New York Times Best Seller List in 2016. Her newest title, Anything is Possible (2017), won the 2018 Story Prize. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

Includes the names: Elizabeth Stout, Elisabeth Strout, Elizabeth Strout, by Elizabeth Strout

Series

Lucy Barton

Olive Kitteridge

Burgess Family

Works by Elizabeth Strout

Popular Recent

Olive Kitteridge (2008) 10,280 copies, 628 reviews

My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016) 3,860 copies, 295 reviews

The Burgess Boys (2013) 2,486 copies, 216 reviews

Amy and Isabelle (1998) 2,265 copies, 83 reviews

Olive, Again (2019) 2,216 copies, 134 reviews

Anything Is Possible (2017) 2,029 copies, 123 reviews

Oh William (2021) 1,586 copies, 106 reviews

Abide with Me (2006) 1,406 copies, 67 reviews

Lucy by the Sea (2022) 1,178 copies, 73 reviews

Tell Me Everything (2024) 485 copies, 39 reviews

The Best American Short Stories 2013 (2013) — Editor — 287 copies, 6 reviews

Olive Kitteridge / Olive Again (2019) 7 copies

Ploughshares at Emerson College Vol. 36, No. 1, Spr. 2010 (2010) 6 copies, 1 review

Literature 39: One on One with Elizabeth Strout 4 copies

The Fort 1 copy

The Family Fortune 1 copy

A Different Road 1 copy

Olive Kitteridge / My Name Is Lucy Barton / Amy & Isabelle (2019) 1 copy

Work Explorer

Associated Works

The Beautiful Summer (1940) — Introduction, some editions — 602 copies, 16 reviews

Ethan Frome / Summer (1982) — Introduction, some editions — 311 copies, 8 reviews

The Friend Who Got Away: Twenty Women's True Life Tales of Friendships that Blew Up, Burned Out or Faded Away (2005) — Contributor — 205 copies, 8 reviews

Fight of the Century: Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases (2020) — Contributor — 205 copies, 4 reviews

The Best American Mystery Stories 2008 (2008) — Contributor — 171 copies, 2 reviews

It Occurs to Me That I Am America: New Stories and Art (2018) — Contributor — 76 copies, 1 review

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015 (2015) — Contributor — 69 copies, 5 reviews

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2019: 100th Anniversary Edition (2019) — Juror — 51 copies, 2 reviews

Providence Noir (2015) — Contributor — 50 copies, 11 reviews

Dream Me Home Safely: Writers on Growing Up in America (2003) — Contributor — 41 copies

The Stories of Frederick Busch (2013) — Editor, some editions — 35 copies, 1 review

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Common Knowledge

Other names: Strauta, Elizabete
Страут, Елізабет
אליזבת סטראוט
스트라우트엘리자베스
斯特劳特·伊丽莎白
Birthdate: 1956-01-06
Gender: female
Nationality: USA
Birthplace: Portland, Maine, USA
Places of residence: Portland, Maine, USA
New York, New York, USA
Durham, New Hampshire, USA
Brunswick, Maine, USA
Education: Bates College (BA, 1977)
Syracuse University (JD, 1982)
Occupations: faculty (MFA program, Queens University)
fiction writer
lecturer (Creative Writing ∙ Colgate University)
Organizations: Queens University of Charlotte
Agent: Molly Friedrich (Aaron Priest Literary Agency)
Short biography: Elizabeth Strout (born January 6, 1956) is a US-American novelist and author. She is widely known for her works in literary fiction and her descriptive characterization. Born and raised in Portland, Maine, her experiences in her youth served as inspiration for her novels–the fictional "Shirley Falls, Maine" is the setting of four of her seven novels.

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

Five years later, she published The Burgess Boys (2013), which became a national bestseller. My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016) was met with international acclaim and topped the New York Times bestseller list. Lucy Barton later became the main character in Strout's 2017 novel, Anything is Possible. A sequel to Olive Kitteridge, titled Olive, Again, was published in 2019.

Members

Reviews

Tell Me Everything: Oprah's Book Club: A Novel by Elizabeth Strout

This is the 9th book that I have read by Strout. She has a remarkable facility for describing the inner workings of her characters. In this book we are back in small town Maine the scene for many of her books. She brings back characters from previous books and although this is helpful for the reader to get into this book it is not a requirement to have read previous Strout books. As with most Strout books this is character and not plot driven. All elements of an aging group of characters are dealt with. Because most of the characters have had more than one marriage there is a lot to follow. The big take away is that we all have our own story to tell and most of the time the story is our secret. I think this is an excellent book for those that have never read Strout before but trust me the best way to experience her is to start with Olive Kitteridge and the go from there.… (more)

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nivramkoorb | 38 other reviews | Dec 11, 2024 |

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

2.5

People suffer. They live, they have hope, they even have love, and they still suffer. Everyone does. Those who think they’ve not suffered are lying to themselves.

Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.

I’m ambivalent about Elizabeth Strout’s fiction. I read her earliest novel Amy and Isabelle years ago, when it was first published. In recent years, I’ve read her two volumes of connected stories about Olive Kitteridge. I had some niggles, but generally liked these books. Those about Lucy Barton were another story. I’m afraid I found them sentimental—at times, bordering on maudlin. And perhaps that’s the source of my trouble with this novel: Lucy. She figures prominently in this book and is mostly presented in such a tiresomely hagiographic light—so willing to listen, empathetic, intuitive, innocent, childlike, and full of joy (but also melancholy and loneliness)—that I became increasingly exasperated. She’s not really the main character per se; Bob Burgess is, but he’s essentially the male equivalent of Lucy: a kind, sensitive, long-suffering man with a history of childhood trauma. (For most of his life, he’s been burdened by the knowledge that he may have been responsible for his father’s untimely death.)

Tell Me Everything revolves around Bob’s friendship (which burgeons into romantic love) for Lucy, by whom he feels deeply and satisfyingly understood. (I can’t tell you how relieved I was when, in the last fifth of the book, this idealized pair finally had a spat. It was a long time coming. Too long. As it happens, Bob is also relieved. Intoxicating as it may initially be, romantic love really can become a burden. ) The book is also about Bob’s legal work on a murder case in rural Maine and his befriending of the suspect, Matthew Beach a strange 59-year-old who paints remarkably accomplished nudes of women in various stages of pregnancy. One of Beach’s works ends up on a wall in Bob’s house. Really? This fairly conventional, unassuming man—who’s never heard of Solzhenitsyn but is apparently sophisticated enough to recognize first-rate artistic talent—displays a nude in a prominent position in his home? Hmm. I think not. Members of Bob’s family figure in the story—his first wife, Pam Carlson, who’s become an alcoholic; his older brother, Jim, whose wife dies; and his nephew, Larry, who has a life-threatening accident. The book also details Lucy’s implausible meeting up with Olive Kitteridge—courtesy of Bob, who knows both of them—so that the two can hear each other’s stories of “unrecorded lives.” Yes, Olive and Lucy form a friendship too.

Strout’s big themes concern love (romantic and other), loneliness, the essential unknowability and brokenness of all of us, and the need for connection. Connecting, Strout makes clear, can never be more than imperfect, given the impossibility of fully understanding others and even ourselves. While reading this novel, I often thought of the epigraph to E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End: “Only connect”. But Strout is not Forster, and while the value of personal relationships may be her focus here, Forster’s subtlety and nuance are lacking. Strout has also chosen a strange authorial voice: the first person plural “we”. Who is this “we” and why did Strout adopt this point of view, writing like some sort of sovereign of the world of fiction? I don’t know but suspect it has something to do with her sense that she’s conveying “truths” known to many. This and her clunky, entirely unnecessary practice of telling the reader what to think or prioritize—e.g., “It should be noted”; “the real point here is. . .”; “as we have said, Bob was not a reflective fellow”; “Oh, Poor Pam! Seriously, you should feel sorry for her.”—and her gauche announcements of plot transitions, supporting evidence, and reminders to the reader (in the manner of a high school essay-writer)—“Two weeks after Lucy visited Olive Kitteridge, this happened:”; “Here is what had been happening to Pam:” ; “Here is an example:” ; As we mentioned earlier . . .”—irritated me.

I was able to complete the book—it’s undemanding and very readable, and I do believe Strout asks good questions about our lives and makes some worthy observations about personal relationships. Having said that, I do not think this is great literature. It tends towards sentimentality. Bob’s friendship with Matthew Beach, who’s suspected of killing his elderly mother, is a case in point. Bob, who provides legal representation for Matthew, discloses personal details of his own traumatic history to the younger man and even lets Matthew use a locator app on his cell phone, so he can track Bob’s whereabouts. How appropriate is this? He links Matthew up with a therapist. Growing in confidence and self knowledge, the once reclusive man ultimately manages to have a romantic relationship with a woman. I found all of this pretty hard to believe. My sense is that readers were supposed to buy it because Bob is such a good man. I’ll refrain from discussing the melodrama.

I wish an editor had reined Strout in—i. e., requested that she do away with the “royal we” narration, cut a few of the deep “connections”, and turn down the emotional volume. As is so often the case, less would have been more. It’s my view that with a judicious trimming, a mediocre book might have become a good one.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for a free advanced reading copy.… (more)

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fountainoverflows | 38 other reviews | Dec 10, 2024 |

Tell Me Everything: Oprah's Book Club: A Novel by Elizabeth Strout

I found it incredibly warming to read this book about our old friends from previous books. Olive, of course, and Lucy and Bob Burgess, who is front and center in this book. "Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, "What does anyone's life mean?"

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Dianekeenoy | 38 other reviews | Dec 6, 2024 |

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

'Tell me everything,' the perfect title for this novel of stories. Olive and Lucy meet in this book and become friends, sitting in Olive's living room on her uncomfortable sofa and telling each other stories of people who would otherwise be forgotten, unrecorded lives they call them. Bob Burgess is a focus for the novel, he is married to Margaret, a vicar, and works occasionally as a solicitor. He takes on a local case of a man who is accused of murdering his mother and takes his client under his wing. This is primarily a novel about small kindnesses and love, in all its variety and friendships and how important these relationships are to people. The relationship between Bob and his brother Jim is explored and between Bob and his first wife Pam and Bob's infatuation with Lucy. The novel is packed with stories, it is a joy to read.… (more)