The novels of Elizabeth Strout are much like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, save that nothing really happens and the multiverse is Maine. In Strout's earlier novels, she delved into the psychology of various interconnected characters, all trying their best to make sense of themselves in light of a particular constellation of circumstances that led to their being who they are. Strout's gift for infusing these non-superheroes with a certain humanity has earned her both adoration and accolades, such as the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2009 for her novel Olive Kitteridge.
Her most recent offering, The Things We Never Say, to be released on May 5, diverges from the Maineverse. But not by much – just further down the coastline to Massachusetts. The Things follows Artie Dam, a 57-year-old history teacher at a high school, whose spacious house stands close to the sea, married with a child who is successful and a job where his students adore him, but who still harbors within him the wish to end his life soon. On the outside, there is the jocund Tim Walz vibe, as he is also a coach, but internally, he battles with a new loneliness he cannot understand. It is a novel about revelation and how it leads to liberation and an entirely new set of constraints.
At 70, Strout describes seeing Artie for the first time through a photograph in old obituaries that a close friend, whose motives she cannot understand, sends to her. "There was a man who had on wire-rimmed glasses, and he had the most pleasant, ordinary-looking face that I'd ever seen," she explains, calling me from Maine. "And I remember thinking, 'Now, who were you? Just because you look so pleasant and so ordinary.'" The author decided to introduce the man, whose name she slightly changed, in a school in 2016, at the moment when America began to lose the notion of "pleasant and ordinary". "She's doing a very decent man in times where decency is devalued, dangerous, and scorned," Anna Funder, an author, and the author's fan, most recently known for her book Wifedom, explains.
The behavior of the characters within the confines of a certain place and a certain time is the main concept behind the books of the American author. It's the safe garden enclosed by walls where the writer is free to roam. "I've always understood with the literature that I'm trying to write that it's about place and time," Strout says, fiddling with her glasses probably for the 15th time during our call. "Because when we're born is so essential to what will happen to us. So, if you take a time and a place and drop in a character, you'll have a story."
Despite the fact that her novels feature women prominently, Strout does not experience any trouble getting into the head of a man. Moreover, she refuses to take sides in ongoing disputes regarding modern masculinity because she is only able to talk about the particular person who stands before her. "Everything that I write stems entirely from trying to imagine what it would feel like to be that person," Strout remarks. "I don't have it in my head to try to project anything about a masculine identity or anything else like that. I'm just thinking, 'Well, how is it for you to be Artie Dam right now?'" Lonely and disoriented, Artie Dam discovers.
Born in Maine (she comes from the family, which has been living in this state since 1603) and New Hampshire, educated in Maine, and now living primarily in Maine after many years spent moving between Pine Tree State and New York City, Strout had to struggle with her background. She has the schoolteacher mother and the parasitologist father, who was also a congregationalist deacon. "It was really, really, really Puritan stock," she says. "And, of course, it doesn't matter whether you like the fact or you dislike it, the whole point of being of this background is to never bring attention to yourself." Strout admires the work of John Cheever, who refused to tell about his successes in life to his mother in order not to make her believe that he was boasting.
With no inclination towards wanting the limelight, she became an astute observer of other people. During her time in New York, she found the subway the best venue for such observations. “It was just watching their gestures, how their faces would look, the whole thing,” she said. “And if you had your sunglasses on, they wouldn’t even know.” She was fascinated with the lack of reserve among New Yorkers, particularly among the students she tutored at a nearby community college for 13 years. “It was so exciting, so refreshing, absolutely wonderful,” she remarked. It was exhausting, though. “I feel things so deeply; it’s always exhausting for me. I have to go back and sit down.”
She penned her debut novel, Amy and Isabelle, at age 42 in 1998. Following its success, and with her daughter Zarina off to college, there came some major changes. She left the home she shared with her husband, a juvenile rights lawyer, but they stayed on good terms. She released her second novel eight years later and won accolades for her third one, Olive Kitteridge, which came out in 2008. She started publishing at an accelerated rate from then onwards; between 2013 and 2024, she produced seven more novels, many of which revolved around characters that interacted with Olive, or another protagonist, Lucy Barton, whom she eventually tied to Olive. She also returned to Maine, remarried, and purchased a new home in the vicinity of her childhood abode.
Strout still feels almost allergic to discussing herself out of the writing context. For instance, she claims that she doesn't have any family traditions, but writes a lot about them. Strout does not have any opinions concerning the advantages and disadvantages of long marriages since she is an expert on them. Strout is uncertain whether people recognize her on the streets. "I have probably more of a blind spot than most people about who I am," she explains. "But as I look back over my work, I realize that I've become increasingly intrigued with the notion that not only do we not really understand other people, but we don't know who we are in relation to other people."
In many cases, in her books, people do not seem to understand who they are at all. For example, The Things We Never Say includes a new kleptomaniac character and a little bit of stealing on the part of Artie. Strout would never steal and wants everybody to know about it. Nevertheless, random stealing attracts her attention. Many years ago, after sharing the story of a woman who had just found out that her kid was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, her mother said to Strout, "When you lose something, you take something." Strout cannot forget this lesson.
For Strout, fiction provides the possibility of solving many mysteries regarding humans. It was when she was about twelve years old and while reading a novel that she came across a person similar to her. "At that point, I remember realizing that through reading fiction, we were able to actually get inside the head of somebody else, and that was incredibly exciting to me," she explains. "That is really why I am a writer, because I am so fascinated with what it might be like to be another person."
All those years of watching have not been wasted, however. Strout's novels are full of details and little gestures that speak volumes; whether it's the way people nod or what they fail to notice. To read Strout's novels is akin to reading the sea, where, if one devotes sufficient effort to the contemplation of its empty expanse, one can determine that there is actually much going on beneath the surface. "She does big-ticket emotion without any sentimentality, in a way that will undo you as a reader," says Funder. "She's making the interior life visible in language that doesn't erase itself, but is very understated."
As much as self-abnegation might be part of Strout's persona, there is evidence that the author understands how influential her own work is. As for Strout's newest novel, Artie remembers a novel, "about a crotchety old woman from Maine and he had read the book reluctantly only because his wife had liked it. He'd forgotten about it until now." This might sound like something Strout might write about herself, for in this case it was precisely the work of Elizabeth Strout—Olive Kitteridge—that is mentioned. Indeed, as Strout puts it, it feels natural that "Artie's wife, who goes on to become a family therapist due to an incident in her past, had been drawn to Strout's novels. And Artie recognized himself in Olive, just as many others have done."
However, Strout says that it is uncertain whether she will write more novels about Artie, like she did with Olive. “I don't know,” she admits. “I have no plans of that right now at all. But I'll tell you, I had no plans of going on to write about Olive or Lucy either.” She cannot resist writing, although she finds this activity as torturous as enjoyable because “these things bubble up inside me, and they've got to find their way out.” Even though she feels exhausted, she still feels this overwhelming need to share her thoughts with others, and it is comparable to being a sculptor that has to create his or her clay. “That concentration to get everything out of myself, that concentration to bring it forth from my viscera, to give it to the reader on a page that she can receive it, to make sure that the sentences fall upon her ears in a manner that they can receive it—it's like being a sculptor, except you have to create the clay as well.”
Still, even though the process of writing may have become as difficult as it was a dozen years ago, Strout says she does not mourn the fact that she no longer suffers from excessive nervousness before publishing a novel. “The nerves didn't last very long,” she admits. “I don't mourn those nerves at all; they were quite extreme.” Moreover, she says that one should never cease to grow.
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