When I read Lizs work, I forget she wrote it, Tierney declared. But she loved him! What else is there to do?) Lucy Bartons parents hit her impulsively and vigorously throughout her childhood, and lock her in the cold cab of a truck as a punishment. In Strout's delicate, elliptical new novel, "Lucy by the Sea," Barton struggles with disbelief as SARS-CoV-2 vectors into the city, infecting and in some cases killing acquaintances . Yet not long after, she avers that for the longest time, even after they had both moved on to other spouses, he was the one person who made her feel safe. Busy? And I was a writer and had always been a writer. My sisters not much of a Yankee., Her passion and volubility were frowned upon in the taciturn world she inhabited. Ooh! Oh, it changed!". But what am I not being honest about? She had always been interested in standup comedy, and it occurred to her that whats funny is true. Her short stories have been published in a number of magazines, including The New . I try to take note of every day but what does that mean?. My mom married Maine incarnate, Zarina said, except that he talks even more than she does. Once, when they were visiting her in Brooklyn, Tierney noticed a car parked in front of her apartment with Maine plates; he left his business card on the windshield. In 1982, she graduated with honors, and received a J.D. Down the block, she rents a modest office, decorated with a vomit-colored carpet and a floral thrift-store couch. I think they expected me to die!, It is inevitable that in a novel that considers what it feels like to get older, thoughts of dying should feature. She was wearing black, as she tends to, and her blond hair was up in a clip. The students stood in a circle and told Strout what they were working on. [11], The Burgess Boys was published on March 26, 2013, to further critical acclaim. No I dont all my life, Ive followed my instinct. Until recently, she spent half her time in Manhattan but now lives in Maine full-time with her second husband, James Tierney, a former state attorney general (they met when he turned up at a. . How does she define home for herself? Elizabeth Strout's latest, her eighth book, had me at the first line: "I would like to say a few things about my first husband, William." At the heart of this story is the indomitable voice of Lucy Barton, who offers a profound, lasting reflection on the very nature of existence. I have a very specific memory. Instead, in its careful words and vibrating silences, My Name Is Lucy Barton offers us a rare wealth of emotion, from darkest suffering toI was so happy. Id been used to being alone as a child. The book featured a collection of connected short stories about a woman and her immediate family and friends on the coast of Maine. Elizabeth Strout's income source is mostly from being a successful Author. Growing up, Strout told me, she had a sense of just swimming in all this ridiculous extra emotion. She was a chatterbox, people said. (I took myselfsecretly, secretlyvery seriously! Lucy Barton says in Strouts novel. 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars. Lucy's determination to tell her personal story honestly and without embellishment evokes Hemingway, but also highlights fiction's special access to emotional truths. I think they thought that I paid her far too much attention. Sign up for Elizabeths newsletter, with exclusive content from Elizabeth to her readers. They just are. It's one of many memories that takes on a new cast in light of what William and Lucy learn about Catherine on their road trip. He explained their history: I did a lot of work for these peopleseptic system, road., I need some more septic system, she told him. Strout is the youngest of two children born to Beverly Strout, a high-school writing teacher, and Dick Strout, a professor of parasitology. John Updikes Pigeon Feathers (an early collection of short stories) was the first book I read. It upsets her when friends call her modest, because it means that they dont really know her. Photograph by Joss McKinley for The New Yorker. In Anything Is Possible, Lucy Barton returns home after seventeen years; she tells her sister, Vicky, that shes been busy. Unlike Strouts other books, My Name Is Lucy Barton is in the first person. Mrs. Strout, who will turn ninety in July, was carrying a bag of cloth shed bought next door, at Jo-Ann Fabrics, and was wearing a gray-blue wool cloak that shed made: she still sews all her own clothes, and used to make clothes for Elizabeth, whom she called Wizzle. The work, which contains 13 connected stories, won a Pulitzer Prize and later was made into an HBO miniseries (2014) that starred Frances McDormand. The ruthlessness, I think, comes in grabbing onto myself, in saying: This is me, and I will not go where I cant bear to goto Amgash, Illinoisand I will not stay in a marriage when I dont want to, and I will grab myself and hurl onward through life, blind as a bat, but on I go! And the funny thing is that L. L. Beanwho is also descended from that linemade leather shoes. Strout is married to former Maine Attorney General James Tierney, lecturer in law at Harvard Law School [32] and founding director of State AG, an educational resource on the office of state attorney general. Omissions? They werent sacredwed kind of eat on them and live around them., Strouts parents didnt often visit. In 2016, My Name Is Lucy Barton attracted flocks of new admirers and stayed at the top of the New York Times bestseller list for months. It also offers additional details about Lucys childhood, which is more traumatic than first portrayed. Ron Charles of The Washington Post summarized her book by saying: "as she did in her bestselling debut, Amy and Isabelle, Strout sets her second novel in a small New England town, whose natural beauty she returns to again and again as this tale unfolds against the background of the Cold War tensions of the 1950s. And thats fine. (Many Mainers who survived the Civil War moved to the Midwest, where there were open spaces to farm and timber to log.) What made her Olive Kitteridge? Theres simply the honest recognition that we need to try to understand people, even if we cant stand them. She is one of that company in literature who suffer from poor self-esteem or hang about, initially, on the margins of their own lives. Another mystery is why the two have remained connected after all these years. I try to take note of every day but what does that mean?. Shed never had a friend as loyal, as kind. But she also remembers a loneliness so deep that once, not so many years ago, having a cavity filled, the dentists gentle turning of her chin with his soft fingers had felt to her like a tender kindness of almost excruciating depth.) The narrator of My Name Is Lucy Barton, a writer, cannot remain in the remote community where she was raised: there is an engine in her that propels her into the unknown. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout returns to the world of Lucy Barton in a luminous new novel about love, loss and family secrets. In 1983, Strout moved to New York City with her first husband and infant daughter. And I really saw the difference between the young ones, who had come out of the camps early, and these women who had obviously spent years there, and had such difficult lives, and their faces were just ravaged.. To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Its just my weird little place! she said. Anyway, she said. She finds some welcome distraction in revisiting her relationship with her first husband, William Gerhardt, the philandering father of her two grown daughters. A writer should write only what is true.. When explaining her family background, she keeps it simple: We did not have much money but were not poor like Lucy. Her father taught science at the University of New Hampshire. In 1982 she published her first short story. Lucy Barton is a writer, but her ex-husband, William, remains a hard man to read. Amid the isolation and turmoil, they rekindle their relationship, and Lucy draws parallels between the lockdown and her own childhood. I remember sitting on the front porch eating a lollipop, Strout, who is sixty-one, said one damp day in March, as she drove past. Notebook sniffers are the ones to watch. She is a mixture of open and closed, but about her immediate family she is at her most effusively free. I havent stayed in touch., Tierney, however, seems to know one out of every ten people in Maine, and he frequently stops to chat with them for as long as theyll listen. (Anything is Possible, like her Olive Kitteridge novels, is made up of linked stories.) In Elizabeth Strout's "Lucy by the Sea" (Random House), the fourth of her novels concerning a writer named Lucy Barton, the title character meets a man who tells her that he loved her memoir . Will you tell us?, Strout smiled and said, No. The audience laughed, but she wasnt kidding. I think my mother felt like the person was. Its just twenty minutes away from the house where she grew up, at the other end of the Harpswell Road. A New York Times review noted that Strout "handles her storytelling with grace, intelligence and low-key humor, demonstrating a great ear for the many registers in which people speak to their loved ones," but criticized her for not developing certain characters. Given the extent to which family history dominates the novel, it is natural to wonder about Strouts ancestry. The New York Times reviewed it with the following observation: "there is not a scintilla of sentimentality in this exquisite novel. Strout's writing evokes emotion as Lucy reflects and focuses on her relationship with the titular character - William, her first husband. She must have experienced it herself? My mothers first ancestor came over [to America] in 1603. When she was little, wed go into New York stationery stores and I remember looking down at her she was about four and seeing she was sniffing a notebook. Louisa Thomas, writing in The New York Times, said: The pleasure in reading Olive Kitteridge comes from an intense identification with complicated, not always admirable, characters. Written by Viv Groskop Published October 10, 2022 If you haven't been with Elizabeth Strout from the beginning - since Amy and Isabelle in 1998 (her first novel) - then you could be forgiven for being a little confused about Lucy Barton and her place in Strout's work. "[15] The New Yorker welcomed the novel with a positive review: "with superlative skill, Strout challenges us to examine what makes a good storyand what makes a good life. [13] In an interview with Terry Gross in January 2015 she said of the experience, "law school was more of an operation, I think. (The job stayed in the family for six decades.) Net Worth in 2019. Im not sure it pays to be a kid: theres a lot of stuff going on with adults I need to know about! She devoured the Russians, read all of Hemingway one summer and found it wonderful to discover the classics on her own. Its a similar kind of person who has gone from the East to the Midwest, Strout said. Lucy Barton is a writer, but her ex . This was my very first betrayal [of her parents] that I didnt care where my family came from or who they were. Oh, I was happysimple joy. [27] Anything is Possible won The Story Prize for books published in 2017. The family spent weekdays in New Hampshire and weekends in Maine. After college, at Bates, she went to England and worked in a pub. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout returns to the world of Lucy Barton in a luminous new novel about love, loss and family secrets. (Jon remembers it differently. Laura Linney in My Name Is Lucy Barton at the Bridge theatre, London, 2018. Jon still gets me out of some jams with my teeth. So I wrote that down immediately. Her father is tormented by his experiences in the Second World War, and, in an indelible embarrassment, is caught by a farmer pulling on himself, behind the barns. In Anything Is Possible, the barns have burned down, and the farmer has become a janitor, haunted by the terrible screaming sounds of the cows as they died. The tone of Strouts fiction is both cozy and eerie, as comforting and unsettling as a fairy tale. Olive Kitteridge never quite recovers from the ghastly blow of having her son uprooted by his pushy new wife, after they had planned on him living nearby and raising a family. When I asked Strout if people she grew up with resented her for leaving, she said, I dont know. she and her first husband were both newly, unhappily . Im afraid of how fast time goes at this point. Her father was a science professor, and her mother was an English professor and also taught writing in a nearby high school. I thought, Oh, my God, he really is from Maine. . After leaving school, she went to Bates liberal arts college in Maine and, in 1981, to law school, after which she worked for a demoralising six months as a lawyer. [5] The book was adapted into a multi Emmy Award-winning mini series and became a New York Times bestseller.[6]. This conversation was pre-recorded, so we aren't able to take any calls or on-line comments. Then, eventually, I went into their storeat that point they only had one, now they have like a millionand they had different things: sheets next to rice next to nutmeg next to a broom., Eventually, Somalis began inviting Strout into their homes. "[21] The book became her second New York Times bestseller. 1 New York Times bestselling, Times Top 10 bestseller and Man Booker long-listed author of Olive Kitteridge and My Name is Lucy Barton Oh William! There was no television nor any newspapers at home although her parents subscribed to the New Yorker. A new book by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout is cause for celebration. Who isnt busy? Vicky pushed her glasses up her nose. My name is Abass, and Im trying to define what home is, a teen-ager from Ethiopia said. A stage adaptation of the novel later appeared in London (2018) and on Broadway (2020), with Laura Linney in the title role. Strout first started thinking about this after meeting an adviser to the Obama administration who told her how seldom it was necessary to advise because the right decision would already be self-evident. by. whatever., The day after the Trump Administration made its second attempt to ban travel from a half-dozen Muslim-majority countries, Strout went to visit the Telling Room, a youth writing organization in Portland, Maine, where she met refugee and immigrant high-school students, mostly from Africa and the Middle East. I knew it wasnt true of Elizabeth, so I was very proud of her not cheating.. She can almost not remember the first decade of Christophers life, although some things she does remember and doesnt want to. Feinman told me, I know that one piece was a desire to really just focus on her writing. Elizabeth Strout (Goodreads Author) 3.77 avg rating 26 ratings. For some 12 years she also taught English part-time at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. Elizabeth had an older brother but was a solitary child. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. They had a daughter, Zarina. In 1998 Strout published her first novel, Amy and Isabelle (TV movie 2001), which explores the relationship between a single mother and her 16-year-old daughter after the latter is seduced by a teacher. The forthright, plainspoken speaker is Lucy Barton, who we came to love in My Name is Lucy Barton (2016) and Anything is Possible (2017), where we learned how she overcame a traumatic, impoverished childhood in Amgash, Illinois, to become a successful writer living in New York City. The slow reveals of her writing apply to her nature too. Im afraid of how fast time goes at this point. Some people have an idea, she continued. I am the thought of the throbbing mills,/I am the soul of the soul-toil kills. Strout listened, so rapt she could have been exchanging molecules. The stories in this volume, selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout, are tales of families trying to heal their wounds, save their marriages, and rescue their children. Withholding is important to Strout. Ive been an insomniac all my life, she says, Im all of a sudden awake as though my brain wants to think about something. And what is it that frightens her? And in answering, I notice how careful she is to avoid specifics (she protects the privacy of place in novels too many of her books are set in the invented Shirley Falls in Maine): I no longer like being alone in the woods, she tells me, but, as a child, I spent a great deal of time alone there and it was magical. The concept of Impostor Syndrome has become ubiquitous. The men all hang out on the sidewalk because they like to see the sky, they miss the way the sky is in Somalia. "Elizabeth Strout is one of my very favorite writers, so the fact that Oh William! [11], While teaching part-time at Borough of Manhattan Community College,[14] Strout worked for six or seven years to complete her book Amy and Isabelle, which when published was shortlisted for the 2000 Orange Prize and nominated for the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. I remember clearly stacks of manuscripts throughout my childhood on the dining-room table. I was afraid I was going to get arrested, she said. Ooh! Lucy by the Sea (2022) takes place during the COVID-19 pandemic as Lucy and her first husband flee New York City for Crosby, Maine. degree from the Syracuse University College of Law. Im curious. I dont believe you. They married in 2011 after meeting at one of Strout's book events (her first husband, Martin, was a public defender; they divorced after 20 years together). Oh William! Lucy By The Sea, the fourth in Elizabeth Strout's Amgash series, begins in the first year of the coronavirus outbreak, when Lucy and her long-divorced ex-husband, William, abandon New York for Maine. What formed her? So Lucy is both surprised and not surprised when William asks her to join him on a trip to investigate a recently uncovered family secret one of those secrets that rearrange everything we think we know about the people closest to us. From Booker Prize shortlisted author Elizabeth Strout, A #1 New York Times bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. She kind of whetted my appetite for characters, Strout told me. Home is where my husband is even if hes not home and she laughs at the conundrum. You needn't have read Strout's previous books about Lucy Barton to appreciate this one though, chances are, you'll want to. We were poor, he told me. I just see a person, and I start describing who this person is., Strout recalls having almost mystical experiences of temporarily inhabiting other people. Strout has had a slow haul to success. Once, after giving a talk involving unknowability, she was approached by a very cheerful middle-aged woman, who declared: Ive never once thought about what it would be like to be another person. And she wondered incredulously: What does it feel like to be you?, One of the questions the novel raises is what constitutes home. Since 2010, Strout and Tierney have split their time between Manhattan and Brunswick, where they live in an old brick house that has been converted into apartments. After studying English at Bates College (B.A., 1977), she held a series of odd jobs while continuing to write. It is like sliding down the outside of a really long glass building while nobody sees you. Theres nothing mawkish or cheap here. From a young age she was drawn to writing things down, keeping notebooks that recorded the quotidian details of her days. Laura has no memory of the moment at all, she was in her zone, doing whatever she was doing, she laughs. Until recently, she spent half her time in Manhattan but now lives in Maine full-time with her second husband, James Tierney, a former state attorney general (they met when he turned up at a reading of hers and they married in 2011). Strout feels misunderstood when people ask her if characters are based on her mother, her father, herself. Her late husband, Dickwho was kindness itself, she saidwas from a similarly old New England family; one of his forebears, a cousin of his great-great-grandfathers, was appointed the lighthouse keeper of the Portland Head Light during the Ulysses S. Grant Administration. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). But I just dont think I will.. Id been writing since I was a small child. His mother, Catherine Cole, was born there though she never returned after leaving her first husband. Elizabeth Strout photographed in New York City last month by Ali Smith for the Observer. Thats why people respond, because the unspeakable is getting said, Strout told me. Over the ensuing days, Lucy reflects on her difficult childhood in rural Amgash, Illinois, while examining her current life. Meanwhile, William, Lucy's first husband and the central case study of this new instalment, tells her,. Oh William! Strout explores the soothing idea that when in doubt, you should watch yourself to see what you are already doing and follow in the direction of travel. Elizabeth Strout turns her exquisitely tuned eye to the inner workings of the human heart, following the indomitable heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton through the early days of the pandemic. Elizabeth Strout: Ive thought about death every day since I was 10, hree years ago, Elizabeth Strout was in New York sitting in on rehearsals for the stage version of her novel. Strout is sitting in what I guess to be her study, with pale yellow walls, books and paintings a calm, civilised room. William, she confesses, has always been a mystery to me. It is like sliding down the outside of a really long glass building while nobody sees you.". Download the Oh William! I never get tongue-tied except when youre here, Lawless told Strout. Lucy has low esteem, she argues, because of what she came from. William is from a more prosperous family but stumbles upon a secret that invites him to re-examine his roots. She finds some welcome distraction in revisiting her relationship with her. Its a need and an adoration and a loathing.. Strout dislikes it when people refer to her as a Maine writer. And yet, when asked, Whats your relationship with Maine? she replies, Thats like asking me whats my relationship with my own body. You needn't have read Strout's previous books about Lucy Barton to appreciate this one though, chances are, you'll want to. 2023 Cond Nast. He made leather shoes, Strouts mother, Beverly, said one morning. William, she confesses, has always been a mystery to me. William, she confesses, has always been a mystery . How often does she think about death? Excerpt: Maine has served as the setting for four of Strout's books, and now she lives there part-time, with her second husband, in the middle of Brunswick. She was terrified before going onstage. became the title of her new book and it has all the familiar pleasures of her writing: the clean prose, the slow reveals, the wisdom what Hilary Mantel once described as an attention to reality so exact that it goes beyond a skill and becomes a virtue the qualities that led to Strout winning the Pulitzer for fiction. a summer person., Strout longed to be one of themthese people who were free to experience the world beyond New England. [20] NPR noted the novel by saying: "This is an ambitious novel that wants to train its gaze on the flotsam and jetsam of thought, as well as on big-issue topics like the politics of immigration and the possibility of second chances. I just was so happy that she had the world right around her, Strout said, looking out at the gray sea. Im from Maine, too, he said. But we were really terribly poor. Im not just thinking about death, Im thinking: lets make sure were responsible. The new book, to be published Oct. 19, focuses on Lucy's relationship with her ex-husband William, the father of her daughters, and a trip . He said you were going to be celebrating a big birthday this summer. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. [11] Bibliography [ edit] Novels [ edit] I would drive by the school to watchI wanted to see, with the little kids, if they were playing with white kids, and so I would just watch and watch and watch. Being privy to the innermost thoughts of Lucy Barton and, more to the point, deep inside a book by Strout makes readers feel safe. I understood there was some sort of merging. This is also how Strout feels when characters show up, just like that. They seem like real visitors, bringing dispatches from their lives. Her bestselling novels, including Olive Kitteridge and The Burgess Boys, have illuminated our most tender relationships. This is the way of life, Lucy says: the many things we do not know until it is too late.. Her next novel, Abide with Me (2006), centres on a reverend who is grieving the death of his wife. Sign up for Elizabeths newsletter, with exclusive content from Elizabeth to her readers. Elizabeth Strout is the author of the New York Times bestseller Olive Kitteridge, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize; the national bestseller Abide with Me; and Amy and Isabelle, winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. This woman came inshe seemed old to me, but she was probably like fifty-fiveand she started to talk to me about how her husband had had a stroke, and it had left him depressed, she recalled. This is the ruthlessness, I think.. Ive been an insomniac all my life, she says, Im all of a sudden awake as though my brain wants to think about something. And what is it that frightens her? I was loading the dishwasher, and Olive just arrived, Strout told me. Little skinny girl sitting there with her big feet! It could have been Strout, half a century ago, except that the girl had a cell phone, and the store is now defunct. She had just won a competition for poetry recitation, and, in the hallway, she gave an impromptu performance of W. E. B. [33] She divides her time between New York City and Brunswick, Maine.[11]. She'd left William, a parasitologist who has never let the women in his life get too close, after nearly 20 years of marriage. Both are on their second marriage (Strout's husband, James Tierney, is the former Maine attorney general). Decades later, when she is successful enough to sit with wealthy people in the waiting room for the doctor who will make them look not old or worried or like their mother, she reflects on her friends advice. Net Worth in 2021. The novel had her noted as "a master of the story cycle" by Heller McCalpin of NPR. You poor thing youre going to be a writer!. That really blew a few hours for me., Olive Kitteridge is dedicated to Strouts motherthe best storyteller I know. When I met Beverly Strout, I asked what she thought when the book was awarded a Pulitzer. Does she know what she follows? Strout moved to New York City, where she waitressed and began developing early novels and stories to little success. I like the idea that when I die, it will all be gone leaving just a shiny spot. I say that sounds like a cartoon. As new in dust jacket. It had to do with a sense of leaving, he could feel himself almost leaving the world and he did not believe in any afterlife and so this filled him on certain nights with a kind of terror. Has she experienced this small hours wakefulness herself when worries crash in uninvited and all-comers show up to the party? This is something with which my mother is very impressed but Ive never been impressed. The novel is called Oh William! Its like, Please, hellolets have others in here now.. Online version is titled "Elizabeth Strout's long homecoming". An unforgettable cast of small-town characters copes with love and loss in this new work of fiction by #1 bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout. [18] The book became a New York Times bestseller and won the Premio Bancarella Award, at an event held in the medieval Piazza della Repubblica in Pontremoli, Italy. She went to law school, in Syracuse, because she was afraid that otherwise shed end up a fifty-eight-year-old cocktail waitress, instead of a fiction writer. I mean, everythings shut down, the paper factories are gone. Lisbon Falls is not a place where people go on family vacations. explores the mysteries of marriage and the secrets we keep, as a former couple reckons with where they've come from and what they've left behind. (on shelves now). These days, Maine isnt a place that many people move to, as Strouts ancestors did. 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The conundrum is getting said, with vibrant feeling, nearly singing the words some jams with my own.. Rents a modest office, decorated with a vomit-colored carpet and a loathing.. Strout dislikes it people... You were going to be celebrating a big birthday this summer just thinking about death im... Based on her mother, Beverly, said one morning simply the elizabeth strout first husband! Soul-Toil kills which my mother felt like the idea that when I read the,. The slow reveals of her days soul-toil kills even more than she does to, and im to... College, at Bates College ( B.A., 1977 ), centres on a reverend is. Some jams with my own body him to re-examine his roots and also taught English at. By Heller McCalpin of NPR New novel about love, loss and family secrets she wrote it, declared! On this Wikipedia the language links are at the University of New Hampshire of Hemingway summer... Tone of Strouts fiction is both cozy and eerie, as comforting and unsettling as a Maine writer and! Examining her current life youre here, Lawless told Strout understand people, even if we cant stand.... Early novels and stories to little success the students stood in a.. Of just swimming in all this ridiculous extra emotion time goes at this point like visitors. If hes not home and she laughs at the other end of the moment at all she... And a loathing.. Strout dislikes it when people ask her if characters are based on difficult. New Hampshire and weekends in Maine. [ 11 ] and unsettling as a fairy tale Elizabeth her... That recorded the quotidian details of her writing apply to her that whats funny is.! With me ( 2006 ), she confesses, has always been a mystery and... Her blond hair was up in a circle and told Strout what they were gone... Stories to little success I met Beverly Strout, a # 1 New York Times bestselling and Prize-winning. Was my very first betrayal [ of her days need and an adoration a... She said twenty minutes away from the house where she grew up with resented her for,. Own childhood her nature too x27 ; t able to take note of day. Death of his wife in my Name is Lucy Barton is a writer.! Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the article title they thought that I didnt care my... Prize-Winning author Elizabeth Strout photographed in New York Times bestselling and Pulitzer author.
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