New readers can, however, enter the Lucy Barton story at any instalment, as Strout is careful to fill in gaps for the uninitiated without testing her loyal fans’ patience. In the latest, long-time readers will recognise Bob Burgess, from whom Lucy and William rent the Maine house, and enjoy glimpses of Olive Kitteridge – the subject of two earlier novels.

There is something life-affirming about Strout’s fiction and it is connected to the way that her novels are getting leaner and more spacious, creating room for readers to reflect on their own experiences.Īcross her nine books, she has created a fictional universe and its weaving is increasingly intricate. But she was my mother, and so some part of me had continued to believe things she had said.” Lucy thinks about her late mother, as she does in every book, not because Strout is unimaginative or in her artistic comfort zone, but because their relationship never stops evolving in Lucy’s mind: “I did not know who she was, and I did not like who she had been. One of the things that sets Strout’s novel apart from other pandemic fiction is that she makes the important, political, point that, for some, the deprivations of the past few years were not necessarily anything new. She intensifies the emotions and drama via the story of Lucy’s grown-up daughters, who both have their own marital difficulties, and Lucy’s fresh reflections on her harsh, poverty-stricken upbringing in Illinois: “My whole childhood was a lockdown.” Occasionally, it feels too soon, samey and depressing to revisit that period. Their emotions fluctuate, in ways many people will recognise from lockdowns, with the desolation alleviated by small satisfactions, such as when Lucy finds a key piece in a jigsaw puzzle and thinks: “I am not unhappy.” Across her nine books, Elizabeth Strout has created a fictional universe and its weaving is increasingly intricate (Photo: Viking) In Maine, they take their daily walks, watch the news, drink wine and find solace and annoyance in each other’s company.

The pair are now in their sixties and early seventies: in Oh William!, Strout explored how they reconnected following the death of Lucy’s husband and William being dumped by his second wife. The title refers to the area of coastal Maine where Lucy and her ex-husband, William, decamp from New York at the beginning of the pandemic.

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