Elizabeth Strout is the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge, as well as The Burgess Boys, Abide With Me, Amy and Isabelle, My Name is Lucy Barton and Olive, Again. She has also been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Orange Prize and the Man Booker Prize. She lives between New York and Maine.
One proof of Elizabeth Strout's greatness is the sleight
of hand with which she injects sneaky subterranean power into
seemingly transparent prose. Strout works in the realm of
everyday speech, conjuring repetitions, gaps and awkwardness
with plain language and forthright diction, yet at the same time
unleashing a tidal urgency that seems to come out of nowhere
even as it operates in plain sight -- Jennifer Egan * New York
Times *
Strout is not only mercilessly funny on the page, she's also
unerringly precise about the long-term effects of loneliness,
parental neglect and betrayal . . . The final scene between
William and Lucy has been carouselling in my mind for days now .
. . devastating and vital, bleak and tender * Sunday Times
*
What sets Strout's work apart is her characterisation . . .
Long on empathy while steering clear of sentimentality, her
prose bears the minerality of a crisp white wine, with a seeming
simplicity that belies its profound power * FT *
A very good novel, deft when it needs to be and ambivalent where
certainty would be facile. Its celebration of the ungraspable
riddles and sudden judgments of real life becomes compulsive. . . .
I cannot get Lucy Barton out of my head * The Times *
[Strout] is a novelist of the inner sensibility, and what makes her
so compellingly readable is her rendering of the ebb and flow of
emotion and impression, of the stream of consciousness between past
and present that makes Lucy cousin to Virginia Woolf's Mrs
Dalloway * Daily Telegraph *
Strout is very good at parsing the contradictory elements that
make up our relationship with ourselves and the lives we lead, and
the extent to which these elements exist in a state of flux.
Such a pleasure to read. And so very wise * Daily Mail *
Strout gets you to reassess every relationship you've ever had
while you can still do something about it * Spectator *
Elizabeth Strout is one of my very favorite writers, so the
fact that Oh William! may well be my favorite of her books is a
mathematical equation for joy. The depth, complexity, and love
contained in these pages is a miraculous achievement -- Ann
Patchett, author of The Dutch House
The end lines of this novel from the staggeringly gifted Elizabeth
Strout are a revelation - a profound understanding of our
relationships, ourselves . . . A luminous novel about love, loss
and family secrets; hard to believe a writer can fathom us so well
* Sainsbury's Magazine *
A superbly gifted storyteller and a craftswoman in a league of
her own -- Hilary Mantel
A terrific writer * Zadie Smith *
She gets better with each book -- Maggie O'Farrell
One of America's finest writers * Sunday Times *
An absolute delight of a book -- Claire Fuller
A wonderful book. It is so clever, the way it's built up in
little layers of discovery, and how every tiny thing discovered
makes the story truer and more painful -- Emma Healey
I do not know any other writer who can portray life in this
way. With such breadth and complexity, such an awareness of the
light and the shadow, and in such sublimely clear and simple
brushstrokes. Even though the issues that Strout looks at in Oh
William! are those many of us know - the growing up of our
children, the family secrets that we carry sometimes without
knowing what they are, the growing older of love, and just that
very simple and most basic question about who we are and what we
for - she shines a light on them that is luminous and ultimately
forgiving. A majestic book. -- Rachel Joyce
There are shades of Anne Tyler and also John Updike in the stories
woven from the impulses and lives of people in America. But what
sets Strout apart is the way she describes people's innermost
thoughts and the nuances of their feelings...this warm and
enjoyable segment of Lucy's life, written by one of our best
storytellers * Evening Standard *
They say good things come in threes and although it feels as though
this latest novel about Lucy Barton marks the completion of a
trilogy, can I put in an early request? For a tetralogy, a
pentalogy or whatever comes after that?...The intense pleasure of
Strout's writing becomes the simple joy of learning more while -
always - understanding less * Observer *
Strout has produced a shimmering meditation on trauma, memory and
marriage - and the perverse ways we distract ourselves from painful
experiences * The i *
A shimmering triumph of a novel, it muses delicately on love, loss
and the mystery of others * Mail on Sunday *
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