Today: Live with Elizabeth Strout
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Olive Kitteridge" will discuss her latest novel, "The Things We Never Say"
Today at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, author Elizabeth Strout will join us live right here for our meeting of The Ink Book Club. Strout won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for Olive Kitteridge, whose eponymous protagonist may have launched the burgeoning fiction category labeled “female rage.” In its citation, the Pulitzer committee noted that Olive is “blunt, flawed and fascinating,” which is true but perhaps understates the sting of the character’s radical candor and rejection of social niceties.
For her new book, Strout has devised a nicer yet equally memorable hero, Artie Dam, whose jovial exterior is at odds with the churn within, a discontent so deep it’s a death wish. He fixates on methods of suicide, though his wife notices nothing amiss. Strout’s portrait is of a man and his wife who harbor secrets from one another, as well as from their own conscious minds. Moreover, she asserts that these secrets are protective mechanisms: if we were totally honest all the time, life might be intolerable.
In a recent Time piece entitled “How Elizabeth Strout Gets Inside People’s Minds,” writer Belinda Luscombe observed that “Strout’s novels are just like the Marvel Cinematic Universe except nothing happens and the multiverse is Maine” (though for this novel, Strout has relocated an entirely new cast of characters to the Massachusetts coast). Luscombe very much means that as a compliment, also noting that Strout breathes life into “non-superheroes to create recognizable, flawed, sympathetic, interesting humans.” Ann Patchett, whose latest novel, Whistler, is currently a major bestseller, recently remarked that Elizabeth Strout is her literary “north star,” that with “every book she publishes, you just think, ‘Oh well, she can’t possibly do that again.’ And then she comes out with another book and it’s even better.”
So join us for a chance to hear how Elizabeth Strout has remained at the top of her game for decades—and if you have questions ahead of the conversation, please post them here in comments.
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(Photo of Elizabeth Strout by Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images)
And below are some questions for Ink subscribers to consider in connection with “The Things We Never Say”: