The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout

LIZ-LANDSCAPE

Extracts

Exclusive Extract: The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout

Puffin-BAU-Elizabeth-Strout-Hero-Desktop_Penguin

Interviews

Elizabeth Strout on why readers mean more than winning the Booker Prize

Elizabeth_Strout_Snippet.jpg

Elizabeth Strout: ‘my hope is that people will not feel so alone’

Tell Me Everything

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER FROM THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING, BOOKER-SHORTLISTED AUTHOR 
 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE 2025 
 
'Stunning, deeply felt and profoundly intelligent' Guardian 
 
It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer, Lucy Barton, who lives nearby in a house next to the sea. Together, Lucy and Bob talk about their lives, their hopes and regrets, and what might have been. 
 
Lucy, meanwhile, befriends one of Crosby’s longest inhabitants, Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known – “unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them – reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning. 
 
Brimming with empathy and pathos, TELL ME EVERYTHING is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.” 
 
'A superbly gifted storyteller and a craftswoman in a league of her own' Hilary Mantel 
 
'A terrific writer' Zadie Smith 
 
'Strout’s ability to reveal the wonder in unrecorded lives continues to astonish' Telegraph 
 
OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK: 'A beautiful read reminding us that there is extraordinary love in ordinary actions' Oprah Winfrey 
 
Elizabeth Strout, Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, 2022

Strout is, as ever, wonderfully attentive to life’s inescapable cruelties and woes

'The shrewd-eyed observer of love, loss and the ties that bind – life, basically – is back. Strout weaves a gossamer light web of a community’s hopes and setbacks.'

Strout’s ability to reveal the wonder in unrecorded lives continues to astonish

Elizabeth Strout welcomes us home again, back to the small town where we witness the interconnection of all the characters we've ever loved in her previous novels. It's a beautiful read reminding us that there is extraordinary love in ordinary actions.

Stunning, deeply felt and profoundly intelligent

Strout delivers that most terrible and yet important of literary clichés: a book with heart

I'm looking forward to the return of another literary friend, Lucy Barton, when Elizabeth Strout publishes Tell Me Everything in August'

The Irish Times - The best books of 2024 so far

A stunner that unites beloved characters from her previous books... Strout's musing on life and the importance of storytelling are downright profound

Pathos and dry humour gild tender reflections on loneliness and connection, and the redemptive power of storytelling.

Above all, Tell Me Everything is a novel of moods, how they govern our personal lives and public spaces, reflected in Strout's shimmering technique

Strout's gift is making readers stop and think about lives - from the exciting to the mundane - and that's what makes this book so appealing

If you've never cracked the spine of a Strout novel before, don't sweat it - you'll feel like a Crosby, Maine, local by the end of the first chapter

Tell Me Everything offers readers an abundance of the searing and plainspoken insights for which Strout is beloved

An exploration of love, loss and unnoticed lives, but most particularly an exploration of the power of stories and storytelling

An achingly moving and exhilarating novel

a tale of hope and healing with all the same beauty she has become known for

A generous compassionate novel about the need for human need for connection, understanding and love, and the damage that occurs when those things are denied

A novel of well-observed connected short stories about fear, regret and friendship

I'm a huge fan of everything Elizabeth Strout has written, so I will just have to be patient and wait for her new one, Tell Me Everything, which is out in September

With tenderness, honesty, intimacy, and compassion, Strout uses her cunning powers of observation to draw readers beyond the mundane to the miraculous complexities where true friendship lies

This is the pleasure of Strout's books. No previous experience required

Elizabeth Strout packs more empathy onto a single page than most other writers scatter throughout an entire book

Exactly the book her fans have been waiting for

Strout's latest dispatch from the tightly knit communities of Maine has conversation at its heart, particularly when she brings together two of her greatest creations, Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton, making for a perfect transition to audio. Additional intrigue comes courtesy of a missing woman and the agonies of her reclusive son

Financial Times - Best Books of 2024: Audio Books

There's a kind of alchemy at work in Elizabeth Strout's prose style

A narrative rich with stories that go to the heart of human suffering and desire

Financial Times - Best Books of 2024: Fiction

Tell Me Everything is a sparkling and masterfully crafted novel that indulges our innate curiosity in humanity, grief, happiness and what it means to love

Longtime fans and newcomers alike will relish this

Simple. Relatable. Elegant... Strout's gift is making readers stop and think about lives - from the exciting to the mundane - and that's what makes this book so appealing.

Lucy Barton, Bob Burgess and Olive Kitteridge are among the signature creations of the modern literary canon. May we continue to reap the richness and surprise of their separate and commingled lives

Deeply human and vibrant portrait of relationships

The Strout hive is strong, and no doubt it will be pleased with her latest novel

Strout's many fans will love this sweet, rambling tale

Strout's delicate unpicking of lives lived quietly, in disarmingly beautiful prose, confirms again her status as one of America's greatest living writers.

For Strout enthusiasts, of whom there are many, the fact that this novel weaves together the worlds of two of her most beloved characters – Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge – is like Christmas itself. Tell Me Everything is a typically intelligent, warm novel from the Pulitzer Prize winner.

For Strout enthusiasts, of which there are many, the fact that this novel weaves together the worlds of two of her most beloved characters - Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge - is like Christmas itself. Tell Me Everything is a typically intelligent, warm novel

iPaper - The 30 best books for Christmas 2024

Chair of Judges, Women's Prize for Fiction 2025

Elizabeth Strout is the Pulitzer prize-winning author of My Name is Lucy Barton, Anything is Possible, Oh William!, Amy and Isabelle, Abide With Me, The Burgess Boys, Olive Kitteridge, and Olive, Again. She has been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the International Dublin Literary Award, the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize. She lives in Maine.

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer, Lucy Barton, who lives nearby in a house next to the sea. Together, Lucy and Bob talk about their lives, their hopes and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, befriends one of Crosby’s longest inhabitants, Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known – “unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them – reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning. 
 
Brimming with empathy and pathos, TELL ME EVERYTHING is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.”

Lucy by the Sea

'A superbly gifted storyteller and a craftswoman in a league of her own' Hilary Mantel 
 
FROM THE BOOKER-SHORTLISTED, PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR 
 
'It is a gift in this life that we do not know what awaits us' 
 
In March 2020 Lucy Barton's ex-husband William pleads with her to leave New York and escape to a coastal house he has rented in Maine. Lucy reluctantly agrees, leaving the washing-up in the sink, expecting to be back in a week or two. Weeks turn into months, and it's just Lucy, William, and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the sea. 
 
Rich with empathy and a searing clarity, Lucy by the Sea evokes the fragility and uncertainty of the recent past, as well as the possibilities that those long, quiet days can inspire. At the heart of this miraculous novel are the deep human connections that sustain us, even as the world seems to be falling apart. 
 
'A terrific writer' Zadie Smith 
 
'I cannot get Lucy Barton out of my head' The Times 
 
'She gets better with each book' Maggie O'Farrell 
 
Sunday Times bestseller, October 2022 
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, 2022 
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, 2009

Stunningly universal . . . with brilliant acuity, Strout has seized on the parallels between Lucy Barton's pervasive sense of alienation and the way the recent global crisis has exposed the helplessness felt by ordinary people everywhere

[Strout's] novels, intricately and painstakingly crafted, overlap and intertwine to create an instantly recognizable fictional landscape . . . you don't so much read a Strout novel as inhabit it

A superbly gifted storyteller and a craftswoman in a league of her own

I cannot get Lucy Barton out of my head

Strout's portrait of a divorced couple united by worry for their two grown daughters illuminates a refreshingly unexplored angle of Covid . . . They leap off the page along with their creator's salty wit and a phantom scent of hand sanitizer

Elizabeth Strout is one of my very favourite writers

It's no secret that Elizabeth Strout is a stunning writer, but I still find myself amazed at the depth she brings to the world of her stories centered on Lucy Barton

Lucy by the Sea holds a mirror up to everything we have been through recently. Not only reflecting disbelief, isolation and how different and at the same time similar we are to each other, but also what happens to human relationships when we can't be together. Superb

Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground

An unflinching depiction of the ways we are all alone . . . Strout's most distinctive skill - the ability to render every character, big or small, with precision - is on full display . . . Lucy finds love in the novel, but Strout never looks away from the loneliness that is inherent in being human: "We all live with people - and places - and things that we have given great weight to. But we are all weightless in the end."

[Strout] has that rare ability to immerse readers in the world of her characters . . . moments of quiet revelation - infidelities, or glimpses into the indignities of incontinence and cancer - feel poignant and real, but also unsentimental. It is a compassionate, life-affirming read, and a much-needed balm for these trying times

Strout captures the minutiae of recent years with insight and compassion

You would be forgiven for avoiding any pandemic-set novels for the rest of the decade, but it's worth making an exception for Elizabeth Strout's Lucy By The Sea

There is an insistent generosity in Strout's books, and a restraint that obscures the complexity of their construction

Lucy By the Sea is another Barton installment that confronts the deep and familiar tangles of intimate relationships . . . Through this complex and isolating time, Lucy plumbs the nuances of human connection

Poised and moving . . . It is only in the steady hands of Strout, whose prose has an uncanny, plainspoken elegance, that you will want to relive those early months of wiping down groceries and social isolation . . . This is a slim, beautifully controlled book that bursts with emotion

After giving a beloved secondary character from her 2016 bestseller I Am Lucy Barton his own standalone with last year's Oh William!, Strout returns to the source, packing her recently widowed heroine off to Maine from Manhattan during lockdown - and exploring, in her clean inimitable prose, no less than love, loneliness, and what it means to be alive

Heartwarming as well as somber . . . Strout's new novel manages, like her others, to encompass love and friendship, joy and anxiety, grief and grievances, loneliness and shame - and a troubling sense of growing unrest and division in America . . . Strout's understanding of the human condition is capacious

Strout writes in a conversational voice, evoking those early weeks and months of the pandemic with immediacy and candor. These halting rhythms resonate . . . Rendered in Strout's graceful, deceptively light prose

In March 2020 Lucy's ex-husband William pleads with her to leave New York and escape to a coastal house he has rented in Maine. Lucy reluctantly agrees, leaving the washing-up in the sink, expecting to be back in a week or two. Weeks turn into months, and it's just Lucy, William, and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the sea. 
 
Rich with empathy and a searing clarity, Lucy by the Sea evokes the fragility and uncertainty of the recent past, as well as the possibilities that those long, quiet days can inspire. At the heart of this miraculous novel are the deep human connections that sustain us, even as the world seems to be falling apart.

Oh William!

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2022 
THE TOP 10 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
The Pulitzer Prize-winning, Booker-longlisted, bestselling author returns to her beloved heroine Lucy Barton in a luminous novel about love, loss, and the family secrets that can erupt and bewilder us at any point in life 
 
Lucy Barton is a successful writer living in New York, navigating the second half of her life as a recent widow and parent to two adult daughters. A surprise encounter leads her to reconnect with William, her first husband - and longtime, on-again-off-again friend and confidante. Recalling their college years, the birth of their daughters, the painful dissolution of their marriage, and the lives they built with other people, Strout weaves a portrait, stunning in its subtlety, of a tender, complex, decades-long partnership. 
 
Oh William! captures the joy and sorrow of watching children grow up and start families of their own; of discovering family secrets, late in life, that alter everything we think we know about those closest to us; and the way people live and love, against all odds. At the heart of this story is the unforgettable, indomitable voice of Lucy Barton, who once again offers a profound, lasting reflection on the mystery of existence. 'This is the way of life,' Lucy says. 'The many things we do not know until it is too late.' 
 
'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 
 
'This is meticulously observed writing, full of probing psychological insight. Lucy Barton is one of literature's immortal characters-brittle, damaged, unravelling, vulnerable and, most of all, ordinary-like us all' Booker Prize Judges 
 
Elizabeth Strout's new novel Tell Me Everything is available now!

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

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

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

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

[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

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

Strout gets you to reassess every relationship you've ever had while you can still do something about it

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

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

Elizabeth Strout is the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge, as well as The Burgess Boys, a New York Times bestseller, Abide With Me and Amy and Isabelle, which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize. She lives in Portland, Maine.

Lucy Barton is a successful writer living in New York, navigating the second half of her life as a recent widow and parent to two adult daughters. A surprise encounter leads her to reconnect with William, her first husband - and longtime, on-again-off-again friend and confidante. Recalling their college years, the birth of their daughters, the painful dissolution of their marriage, and the lives they built with other people, Strout weaves a portrait, stunning in its subtlety, of a decades-long partnership. 
 
Oh William! is a luminous novel about the myriad mysteries that make up a marriage, about discovering family secrets, late in life, that rearrange everything we think we know about those closest to us, and the way people continue to live and love, against all odds. At the heart of this story is the unforgettable, indomitable voice of Lucy Barton, who once again offers a profound, lasting reflection on the mystery of existence. 'This is the way of life,' Lucy says. 'The many things we do not know until it is too late.'

Olive, Again

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Number One New York Times bestselling author of Olive Kitteridge and My Name is Lucy Barton 
 
'A terrific writer' Zadie Smith 
 
'A superbly gifted storyteller and a craftswoman in a league of her own' Hilary Mantel 
 
'A novel to treasure' Sunday Times 
 
Olive, Again follows the blunt, contradictory yet deeply loveable Olive Kitteridge as she grows older, navigating the second half of her life as she comes to terms with the changes - sometimes welcome, sometimes not - in her own existence and in those around her. 
 
Olive adjusts to her new life with her second husband, challenges her estranged son and his family to accept him, experiences loss and loneliness, witnesses the triumphs and heartbreaks of her friends and neighbours in the small coastal town of Crosby, Maine - and, finally, opens herself to new lessons about life. 
 
'A powerful storyteller immersed in the nuances of human relationships' Observer 
 
'She gets better with each book' Maggie O'Farrell 
 
'Her writing is exquisite; her vision is boundless. What a sublime book.' Rachel Joyce 
 
'Glorious' The Times 
 
'A perfect novel' Financial Times 
 
Elizabeth Strout's new novel Tell Me Everything is available out now!

A novel to treasure... Olive, Again, like Strout's first book, delivers roughly five hours of spine-tingling pleasure.

Olive, Again is a tour de force. With extraordinary economy of prose - few writers can pack so much emotion, so much emotion, so much detail into a single paragraph - Strout immerses us in the lives of her characters, each so authentically drawn as to be deserving of an entire novel themselves. Compassionate, masterly and profound, this is a writer at the height of her powers

Emotionally honest, psychologically piercing and ultimately life-affirming

Her writing is exquisite; her vision is boundless. What a sublime book.

A superbly gifted storyteller and a craftswoman in a league of her own. In Olive, Again, she teaches us that there is always more to know about human beings, even the ones we are closest to.

There's no simple truth about human existence, Strout reminds us, only wonderful, painful complexity. 'Well, that's life,' Olive says. 'Nothing you can do about it.' Beautifully written and alive with compassion, at times almost unbearably poignant. A thrilling book in every way.

Strout again demonstrates her gift for zeroing in on ordinary moments in the lives of ordinary people to highlight their extraordinary resilience

In Olive Kitteridge, Strout has created one of those rare characters...so vivid and humorous they seems to take on a life independent of the story framing them

Elizabeth Strout is... one of the undisputed heavyweights of generous, clear-eyed domestic realism

A special, precious book...full of hope and humanity

Funny, sad, tender and truthful, this is pure joy

Olive, Again follows the blunt, contradictory yet deeply loveable Olive Kitteridge as she grows older, navigating the second half of her life as she comes to terms with the changes - sometimes welcome, sometimes not - in her own existence and in those around her. 
 
Olive adjusts to her new life with her second husband, challenges her estranged son and his family to accept him, experiences loss and loneliness, witnesses the triumphs and heartbreaks of her friends and neighbours in the small coastal town of Crosby, Maine - and, finally, opens herself to new lessons about life.

My Name Is Lucy Barton (Dramatisation)

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
Presenting an original audiobook performance of the stage production of My Name Is Lucy Barton, starring Academy Award and Tony nominee Laura Linney. 
 
Praised as "deeply affecting" and "heartbreaking" by The Guardian (UK), this is a faithful adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout's best-selling novel of the same name. 
 
Unsteady after an operation, Lucy Barton wakes to find her mother sitting at the foot of her bed. She hasn't seen her in years, and her visit brings back to Lucy her desperate rural childhood, and her escape to New York. As she begins to find herself as a writer, she is still gripped by the urgent complexities of family life. 
 
Published as the play comes to Broadway after a highly-acclaimed UK run in 2018, this is a unique opportunity to hear Laura Linney's "simply superb" (The Times UK) performance of this haunting, dramatic monologue. 
My Name Is Lucy Barton was originally produced by Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr for the London Theater Company at the Bridge Theatre in June 2018. Produced on Broadway by the Manhattan Theater Club, Lynne Meadow, Artistic Director, Barry Grove, Executive Producer and The London Theater Company, in association with Penguin Random House Audio. 
 
© 2016 Elizabeth Strout (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Presenting an original audiobook performance of the stage production of My Name is Lucy Barton, starring Academy Award and Tony nominee Laura Linney. 
Praised as "deeply affecting" and "heartbreaking" by The Guardian (UK), this is a faithful adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout's best-selling novel of the same name. 
Unsteady after an operation, Lucy Barton wakes to find her mother sitting at the foot of her bed. She hasn't seen her in years, and her visit brings back to Lucy her desperate rural childhood, and her escape to New York. As she begins to find herself as a writer, she is still gripped by the urgent complexities of family life. 
Published as the play comes to Broadway after a highly-acclaimed UK run in 2018, this is a unique opportunity to hear Laura Linney's "simply superb" (The Times UK) performance of this haunting, dramatic monologue. 
My Name Is Lucy Barton was originally produced by Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr for the London Theater Company at the Bridge Theatre in June 2018. Produced on Broadway by the Manhattan Theater Club, Lynne Meadow, Artistic Director, Barry Grove, Executive Producer and The London Theater Company, in association with Penguin Random House Audio. 
©2016 Elizabeth Strout (P)2019 Random House Audio

Anything is Possible

From the Pulitzer prize-winning, Booker-shortlisted. Sunday Times bestselling author of OLIVE KITTERIDGE and MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON 
 
Anything is Possible tells the story of the inhabitants of rural, dusty Amgash, Illinois, the hometown of Lucy Barton, a successful New York writer who finally returns, after seventeen years of absence, to visit the siblings she left behind. 
 
Reverberating with the deep bonds of family, and the hope that comes with reconciliation, Anything Is Possible again underscores Elizabeth Strout's place as one of America's most respected and cherished authors. 
 
*** 
 
'A terrific writer' Zadie Smith 
 
'A superbly gifted storyteller and a craftswoman in a league of her own' Hilary Mantel 
 
*Elizabeth Strout's new Booker-longlisted novel THE THINGS WE NEVER SAY is available now*

It's hard to believe that a year after the astonishing My Name Is Lucy Barton Elizabeth Strout could bring us another book that is by every measure its equal, but what Strout proves to us again and again is that where she's concerned, anything is possible. This book, this writer, are magnificent.

Ann Patchett, No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of 'Commonwealth'

This is a shimmering masterpiece of a book...Strout is a brilliant chronicler of the ambiguity and delicacy of the human condition. Anything is Possible is a wise, stunning novel

The words appear on the page as if breathed there

Anything is Possible is wonderfully readable because Strout really can write you into a world until you feel you are there with her, in that house, that life, that little Podunk of a place

Strout's compassion for her fellow creatures, as these anguished, lean stories prove, is as keen as a whip and all the more painful for it

The work of Elizabeth Strout suggests that she pays a similar quality of unseparate attention to life, which she - not passively, but actively - takes in, listening to, looking into it, reflecting up on and freeing it once more, remade, in beautifully placed words, onto the page to live again for us, her fortunate readers

Anything is Possible is absolutely wonderful. Here is a writer at the peak of her powers: compassionate, profoundly observant, laser-cut diamond brilliant

Anything Is Possible confirms Strout as one of our most grace-filled, and graceful, writers

There is immense humanity in Strout's writing....her masterful economy of prose creates a rich tapestry infused with emotional wisdom...Anything is Possible is a masterpiece

A quietly gripping deception of some of the ordinary, messy, interwoven lives that Lucy and her mother discussed in the earlier book

Strout, always good, just keeps getting better

In her latest work, Strout achieves new levels of masterful storytelling.

[F]ull of searing insight into the darkest corners of the human spirit... 'Anything Is Possible' is both sweeping in scope and incredibly introspective. That delicate balance is what makes its content so sharp and compulsively readable... With assuredness, compassion and utmost grace, her words and characters remind us that in life anything is actually possible

The epic scope within seemingly modest confines recalls Strout's Pulitzer Prize winner, Olive Kitteridge, and her ability to discern vulnerabilities buried beneath bad behavior is as acute as ever. Another powerful examination of painfully human ambiguities and ambivalences-this gifted writer just keeps getting better.

If you miss the charmingly eccentric and completely relatable characters from Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout's best-selling My Name is Lucy Barton, you'll be happily reunited with them in Strout's smart and soulful Anything is Possible

Strout once again shows her talent for adroitly uncovering what makes ordinary people tick

Strout pierces the inner worlds of these characters' most private behaviors, illuminating the emotional conflicts and pure joy of being human, of finding oneself in the search for the American dream

Amgash, Illinois, will be familiar to Elizabeth Strout fans as the hometown of the protagonist of her 2016 novel, My Name is Lucy Barton. In Anything is Possible... Lucy's legend looms large... but no prior reading is required to enjoy Strout's powerful writing and empathy

We devoured Strout's last novel, My Name Is Lucy Barton, and her latest-which is loosely linked to Lucy Barton-is no different. Told from multiple points of view, it's about residents of a small town in Illinois struggling with the most relatable and quotidian problems... you'll swear you know these characters. (In fact, it reminds us a bit of another of Strout's masterpieces, the excellent Olive Kitteridge.)

Elizabeth Strout's prose is like words doing jazz

I am deeply impressed. Writing of this quality comes from a commitment to listening, from a perfect attunement to the human condition, from an attention to reality so exact that it goes beyond a skill and becomes a virtue.

Hilary Mantel on 'My Name is Lucy Barton'

A powerful storyteller immersed in the nuances of human relationships

Tender, elegiac, this is the story of a single life that also manages to tell the story of many

The writing is wrenchingly lovely. It almost always is with Strout, whether she's knitting metaphors or summarizing, with agonizing economy, whole episodes.

There are not many novelists out there producing writing as good as this

Down to every sentence, it's wise, touching and quietly powerful

As always, Strout treats even the most difficult characters with rare understanding. "It made me feel much less alone," says on reader of Lucy's memoir. The same will surely be said of Anything Is Possible

Gorgeous... Strout is in that special company of writers like Richard Ford, Stewart O'Nan and Richard Russo, who write simply about ordinary lives and, in so doing, make us readers see the beauty of both their worn and rough surfaces and what lies beneath

A subtle, disturbing and touching book that is a miracle of wisdom and perception

A beautifully told story of small-town Americans dealing with big life issues

Utterly beautiful in the way that these characters were flawed to their core yet brimful of keeping it together no matter what...I loved it, there wasn't a moment when I didn't believe it.

In all her novels, including this one, "the kindness of strangers is a fierce sun than can pierce the cloud"

Every chapter has depth, nuances, restrained descriptions and luminous characterisation. A wonder of a book

Elizabeth Strout is a novelist in whose hands anything really is possible, and if you've yet to discover her, make this holiday the one you do

This glimmering, profound, beautiful novel is modern American writing at its best'

Just as understated and as full of horrifyingly elisions and surprising epiphanies as its predecessor

This audacious novel is about small-town characters struggling to make sense of past family traumas

Strout turns her clear, incisive gaze on the intricacies and betrayals of small town life

Anything is Possible is predictably great because it's written by Elizabeth Strout, and brilliantly unpredictable - because it is written by Elizabeth Strout

Anything is Possible tells the story of the inhabitants of rural, dusty Amgash, Illinois, the hometown of Lucy Barton, a successful New York writer who finally returns, after seventeen years of absence, to visit the siblings she left behind. 
 
Reverberating with the deep bonds of family, and the hope that comes with reconciliation, Anything Is Possible again underscores Elizabeth Strout's place as one of America's most respected and cherished authors.

My Name Is Lucy Barton

A #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE &amp; THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 
 
An exquisite story of mothers and daughters from the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge 
 
Lucy is recovering from an operation in a New York hospital when she wakes to find her estranged mother sitting by her bed. They have not seen one another in years. As they talk Lucy finds herself recalling her troubled rural childhood and how it was she eventually arrived in the big city, got married and had children. But this unexpected visit leaves her doubting the life she's made: wondering what is lost and what has yet to be found. 
 
The story continues in Anything is Possible, Oh William! and Lucy by the Sea, available to read now! 
 
***** 
 
'A terrific writer' Zadie Smith 
 
'A superbly gifted storyteller and a craftswoman in a league of her own' Hilary Mantel 
 
'So good it gave me goosebumps. One of the best writers in America' Sunday Times 
 
Elizabeth Strout's new novel Tell Me Everything is out now!

A heart-wrenching story of mothers and daughters from the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge

I am deeply impressed. Writing of this quality comes from a commitment to listening, from a perfect attunement to the human condition, from an attention to reality so exact that it goes beyond a skill and becomes a virtue. I have never read her before and I knew within a few sentences that here was an artist to value and respect

An exquisite novel... in its careful words and vibrating silences, My Name Is Lucy Barton offers us a rare wealth of emotion, from darkest suffering to - 'I was so happy. Oh, I was happy' - simple joy

Claire Messud, New York Times Book Review

So good I got goosebumps... a masterly novel of family ties by one of America's finest writers

My Name is Lucy Barton confirms Strout as a powerful storyteller immersed in the nuances of human relationships... Deeply affecting novel...visceral and heartbreaking...If she hadn't already won the Pulitzer for Olive Kitteridge this new novel would surely be a contender

Hypnotic...yielding a glut of profoundly human truths to do with flight, memory and longing

This is a book you'll want to return to again and again and again

Slim and spectacular...My Name Is Lucy Barton is smart and cagey in every way. It starts with the clean, solid structure and narrative distance of a fairy tale yet becomes more intimate and improvisational, coming close at times to the rawness of autofiction by writers such as Karl Ove Knausgaard and Rachel Cusk. Strout is playing with form here, with ways to get at a story, yet nothing is tentative or haphazard. She is in supreme and magnificent command of this novel at all times....

My Name Is Lucy Barton is a short novel about love, particularly the complicated love between mothers and daughters... It evokes these connections in a style so spare, so pure and so profound the book almost seems to be a kind of scripture or sutra, if a very down-to-earth and unpretentious one

Her concise writing is a masterclass in deceptive simplicity...Strout writes with an exacting rhythm, with each word and clause perfectly placed and weighted and each sentence as clear and bracing as grapefruit. It's a small masterpiece

This short, simple, quiet novel wriggles its way right into your heart and stays there

Agleam with extraordinary psychological insights...delicate, tender but ruthless reveries

An eerie, compelling novel, its deceptively simple language is a 'slight rush of words' which hold much more than they seem capable of containing...This novel is about the need to create a story we can live with when the real story cannot be told...

Strout uses a different voice herself in this novel: a spare simple one, elegiac in tone that sometimes brings to mind Joan Didion's

This is a glorious novel, deft, tender and true. Read it

An exquisitely written story...a brutally honest, absorbing and emotive read

Honest, intimate and ultimately unforgettable

Sympathetic, subtle and sometimes shocking

Plain and beautiful...Strout writes with an extraordinary tenderness and restraint

One of this year's best novels: an intense, beautiful book about a mother and a daughter, and the difficulty and ambivalence of family life

Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge is the best novel I've read for some time

An exquisite novel of careful words and vibrating silences

New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books of 2016

In this quiet, well observed novel, a mother and her mysteriously ill daughter rebuild their relationship in a New York hospital room. Deft and tender, it lingers in the mind

A worthy follow-up to Olive Kitteridge

I loved My Name is Lucy Barton: she gets better with each book

The standout novel of the year - a visceral account of the relations between mother and daughter and the unreliability of memory

In a brilliant year for fiction, I've admired the nuanced restraint of Elizabeth Strout's My Name is Lucy Barton

Elizabeth Strout's My Name is Lucy Barton shouldn't work, but its frail texture was a triumph of tenderness, and sent me back to her excellent Olive Kitteridge

A rich account of a relationship between mother and daughter, the frailty of memory and the power of healing

This physically slight book packs an unexpected emotional punch

My Name Is Lucy Barton intrigues and pierces with its evocative, skin-peeling back remembrances of growing up dirt-poor.

A mother comes to visit her daughter in hospital after having not seen her in many years. Her unexpected visit forces Lucy to confront her past, uncovering long-buried memories of a profoundly impoverished childhood; and her present, as the façade of her new life in New York begins to crumble, awakening her to the reality of her faltering marriage and her unsteady journey towards becoming a writer. 
 
From Lucy's hospital bed, we are drawn ever more deeply into the emotional complexity of family life, the inescapable power of the past, and the memories - however painful - that bind a family together.

Elizabeth Strout

Strout’s 11th novel might well be the first great work of fiction about Trump’s presidency…This is a deeply existential novel, preoccupied with secrecy, loneliness and the limits of understanding. Strout is brilliant at uncovering what goes on beneath the surface of ordinary life…There is nothing showy about Strout’s prose, but over the past two decades her novels have become an ambitious literary project, a kind of interconnected anatomy of American solitude

This is a profound, resplendent novel that stares our present moment in the face while throwing a lifeboat to cling to in the storm. And Artie Dam is someone you may never be able to forget, not least for his white socks and how they irritate his wife — these are the things we remember, which Strout, a titan of the most intricate storytelling, understands well.

One of the most profoundly moving books I have read - I envy anyone reading it for the first time. Elizabeth Strout is one of those rare novelists whose books leave you a little wiser, open and more compassionate than you were when you began reading. Emotionally stunning, devastatingly wise, a beautiful read. Her best novel yet

Elizabeth Strout writes extraordinary fiction about ordinary people...Strout’s gift is to reveal their frustrations and epiphanies in stories that are deceptively simple yet carry a profound emotional charge

A moving, tender and wise novel about a committed teacher who is utterly confounded by the emotional complexities of daily life. This might be Elizabeth Strout’s best yet

Readers will delight in the discovery of this new fictional world around Artie Dam, and the possibilities that lie ahead...Let’s hope that this fine author continues steadily along her path, delivering unto her loyal readers story upon story, gift upon gift

One of the best novels I have read. I am so stunned by it, how moving and beautiful and perfect it is

Strout is always smart, always perceptive, and Artie is a memorable figure

I was torn between wanting to devour it in a single sitting and slowly savouring its brilliance. Strout writes about some of the darkest, saddest things with such grace and humanity that you're left still feeling optimistic about the world. The Things We Never Say is utterly captivating in the classic Stroutian understated way. No one else delves into the intricacies of everyday life with such searing insight and honesty. If stranded on a desert island, The Complete Works of Strout, would unequivocally be my book of choice to remind me of the complexity and ultimate goodness of people.

A meditation on the unspoken fears that define us and the abiding love that, despite everything, manages to sustain us

An epic novel distilled into 200 pages...The Pulitzer Prize winning author’s first standalone novel in over a decade is a balm for the soul. It introduces us to the terrific character of Artie Dam, a history teacher and husband who is far lonelier than he lets on, just as the revelation of a secret upends his life

She writes so precisely, and she can say in 180 pages what a lot of novelists take hundreds and hundreds of pages to say

A gentle and beautifully written story…Like all her work, The Things We Never Say is a compassionate and insightful novel about human connection

Strout's superpower is reminding readers that there is no such thing as an ordinary person. Everyone is battling something, even if we don't broadcast it. Writing about the inner lives and struggles of small-town characters – the affairs, deaths, illnesses and suicidal thoughts that plague many of us –gives her stories a remarkable unifying quality

Artie Dam is a man with a secret. He spends his days teaching history to high schoolers, expanding their young minds, correcting their casual cruelties, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He goes to holiday parties with his wife of three decades, makes small talk with neighbours, and, on weekends, takes his sailboat out on the beautiful Massachusetts Bay. He is, by all appearances, present and alive. But inside, Artie is plagued by feelings of isolation. He looks out at a world gone mad—at himself and the people around him—and turns a question over and over in his mind: how is it that we know so little about one another, even those closest to us? 
 
And then, one day, Artie learns that life has been keeping a secret from him, one that threatens to upend his entire world. Once he learns it, he is forced to chart a new course, to reconsider the relationships he holds most dear—and to make peace with the mysteries at the heart of our existence. 
 
With exquisite prose and profound insight, Elizabeth Strout captures the way grief reverberates through decades, the comfort found in deep friendships and the freedom that comes when we break free of our secrets. The Things We Never Say is a stunning new novel from one of our most acclaimed observers of the human heart.

Elizabeth Strout

Books by Elizabeth Strout

Articles featuring Elizabeth Strout

Exclusive Extract: The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout

Elizabeth Strout on why readers mean more than winning the Booker Prize

Elizabeth Strout: ‘my hope is that people will not feel so alone’

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter