Books
Strouts latest book revisits Lucy Barton, a character the author has followed across four titles.
Readers first met Lucy Barton, the febrile, warm-hearted writer, in 2016sMy Name Is Lucy Barton.
She adds, sounding almost sanguine, We’re just rolling on.
We are who we are.
Our faces change, our bodies change, our lives change, but we somehow don’t.
Now 66, Strout is one of the most prolific and lauded fiction writers working in America.
Because I thought, Wait a minute, Im not even sure people are reading books.
Im not sure theyre going to be ready.
[Its] an act of faith.
Below, Strout discusses writing about COVID-19, finding Lucy Bartons voice, and searching for moments of connection.
I’m fascinated by the fact that you keep going back to these characters.
How do you approach that?
So, I do seem to keep going back to my characters.
I never plan to.
I had just finishedOh William!and then this started and I thought, Oh, man.
So, it was really a combination of having them already very much still in my head.
And then the pandemic began, and all that uncertainty that we didnt know what would happen.
I mean, I didnt know how I could be writing about anything else.
If I had been working on a different book, I would probably have continued on that book.
Were you concerned about writing about the pandemic?
And one of the most difficult things for me about writing this book was the sense of time.
There was no time anymore, especially that first year.
Everything just globbed into one day or night or whatever, and that was so strange.
And I really wanted to be able to get that down.
But at the same time, it’s a novel, it needs to have some narrative thrust.
Why did that style feel right for Lucy?
When I first wroteMy Name is Lucy Barton, that was the beginning of [this style].
And it came to me because I heard her voice.
Usually, I just feel the presence of a character.
And it was almost like a fine gold thread coming down in front of me.
Often, these very subtle moments pass by quickly in real life.
When did you become interested in writing about those moments?
Im not really sure, but I do know that I have been interested in people my entire life.
Ive become more interested in that, even in my conscious, not-writing life.
Failing, but trying, succeeding, failing again.
Usually, I intend to write about a person as honestly as I can.
I learned this back withOlive Kitteridge, the originalOlive Kitteridge.
And then, I remember thinking, Let her be Olive.
Let them be who they are for better or worse.
Im not judging them.
The readers can judge them, but let them be who they are.
And they are what we all are, which is complicated.
Another thing you do so well is write about shame.
You had a fairly repressed, Puritanical upbringing.
Did that affect your writing about shame?
Well, it probably [did], now that you mention it.
Thats very interesting, I had never made that connection.
And yet, I had nothing but feelings.
My first husband was Jewish and that was an entirely different culture.
It was so refreshing, because everybody talked about anything, and I was just amazed.
So, that was eye-opening and wonderful.
But only recently again have I recognized that I do have an ongoing theme of shame.
They’re actually quite different, but they touch each other.
I dont think that remorse is a bad thing.
For example, Olive feels it.
She feels it about her son.
She recognizes at moments Look what I did.
And she feels remorse.
Every time she opens the door, she’s blushing.
I feel like, The poor thing.
Does writing about those feelings just happen naturally now?
I think at this point it just happens naturally.
I think at this point I just keep going for the sentence that sounds the best for me.
And it needs to be a truthful sentence in every sense of the word.
It took me years to learn what that meant.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
