Interview: January 14, 2016

Not only is Elizabeth Strout a bestselling author, her work is also critically acclaimed and prize-winning --- including the Pulitzer Prize for OLIVE KITTERIDGE. Her latest book, MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON, features another strong female protagonist, Lucy Barton, a writer whose slow recovery from an operation reunites her with her estranged mother and the life she left behind. Turning a simple hospital visit into the story of a whole life is no easy feat, and in this interview with Bookreporter.com’s Katherine B. Weissman, Strout reveals how all the elements of MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON came together --- intentionally or unintentionally --- from Lucy’s distinctive first-person voice to the setting to the unique structure of the novel. She also discusses her journey as a writer, starting with a very supportive college professor, and why her own high standards are the only ones she strives to meet.

Bookreporter.com: All of your books have been quite different, yet (for example) OLIVE KITTERIDGE and MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON are both built around their eponymous protagonists. How do the two characters compare?

Elizabeth Strout: Olive Kitteridge as a character seems very different from the character of Lucy Barton, because Olive is abrasive and sharp in her opinions, but in truth there are similarities I suppose between the two women. They are both strong, and they both strive to be honest with themselves, I think.

BRC: The brief interlude between Lucy and her mother in the hospital is the core of the novel. Yet there is nothing obvious or unambiguous about their bond. What in particular did you want to explore about mothers and daughters through this relationship (and Lucy’s relationship with her own daughters)?

ES: You know, I did not set out to consciously explore any particular aspect of mothers and daughters. It is more that I saw them there in the hospital and understood their relationship as I worked on it, and I felt that for them it was a truthful relationship. I think the idea that Lucy does not really know her mother, and her mother does not really know Lucy, was interesting to me. I think this is the case for many people. And yet Lucy, being of the generation she is, has a closer bond with her own daughters. This is partly because she can give them what she did not get from her own mother, and partly because women of Lucy’s generation, by and large, have had a different relationship with their kids.

BRC: Setting part of the book in a hospital where Lucy was captive to speak with her mother set up a dynamic. Was that intentional so Lucy was roped into the discussion and could not walk away?

ES: Again, it was not so much intentional --- having Lucy unable to escape her mother in the hospital --- as it was the way it happened as I wrote it. Only later did I realize that it may work as a real device, but I never start with the concept of device. I always start with character, and I did that with this book as well.

BRC: The structure of the novel isn’t linear but has a ruminative quality, jumping around in time and place, though it keeps coming back to the visit in the hospital. Why did you take this approach?

ES: The structure of the novel came to me as I wrote it. I never write from beginning to end, ever --- a story, a novel --- it’s not how I work. But in this case I realized that by having the older Lucy looking back on events that had happened, I could escape perhaps some of that claustrophobic stuff that can happen when something is written in the first person. I mean that sometimes the reader can feel locked inside someone’s head to an uncomfortable degree, and by having this be more retrospective, and also contemplative, I hoped to avoid that.

BRC: This is your first book to be written in the first person; even the title is in the first person. How did that come about?

ES: It was a plunge I took in writing this in the first person. I have never done that before, and I was worried about it. I even tried a number of times with the third person. But it was a tonal thing. I could hear her voice, and it had a particularity to it, and so I went ahead with it. The title comes from her observation that Sarah Payne “could not even say her name,” and so Lucy is taking agency and stating her name as the title.

BRC: Writing about a person who becomes a writer can be tricky. It seems that you discovered your vocation very early in life. How does that compare with someone like Lucy, who had to overcome so much to find her voice? Did you have mentors like Sarah Payne?

ES: I did know from a very, very early age that I was a writer. I had a few mentors, my first being a college professor who let me turn in a short story every time there was a paper due for his class. I took three classes from this man, and I don’t think anyone ever knew I was turning in stories instead of the papers that were due. It was a lovely thing for him to give me this freedom. He commented very little on the stories and just said "Keep going."

BRC: Sarah Payne, when Lucy meets her, describes herself as “just” a writer. Later in the book, Lucy herself, speaking to her mother, makes the same type of self-deprecating comment. Why do you think this lack of confidence is so common in women? Did you contend with it yourself?

ES: It’s very interesting, the question of women writers. I can’t speak for other female writers, but I suppose there is some lack of confidence that could occur because of this. Lucy’s lack of confidence came because of her background, I think, more than her being a woman. I don’t feel myself that I have lacked confidence because I was a woman; my parents told me to go do what I needed to do, and so I was lucky in that way. My confidence problems come in just worrying that my work may not be as good as I can make it be.

BRC: There is a great deal of emphasis in the novel on not judging others, not seeing oneself as superior. The advice of Lucy’s mentor, Sarah Payne, is crucial here. Is this a principle you try to follow yourself, and how did it come into play as you were writing this book?

ES: I suspect in real life, I am as judgmental as the next person, but I would like not to be that way. In my writing I have always felt free from that judgment; I try and let my characters be who they are. This is one wonderful thing about being a writer for me. If I find myself judging a character, then I have to stop and ask myself why. 

BRC: Lucy’s voice is interesting, because it is beautiful but plainspoken, reflecting her strange, isolated upbringing. How did you find or develop her language?

ES: I really don’t know exactly where Lucy’s voice came from. It just kind of appeared, and I kept paring it down, listening to it. There was a tonal quality to it that I had to really pay attention to. It took me by surprise.

BRC: Unlike your last two books, set in New England, MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON is set partly in rural Illinois, where Lucy grows up. During her childhood, people from “the East” are perceived as very different. Then Lucy herself becomes a New Yorker. Can you talk about the emotional importance of place in this book?

ES: I have always thought that place was very important. My husband and I were driving around the Midwest and I thought: Oh, look at this, all this sky, a house here, another house there, the fields etc. And I thought: This is where Lucy comes from. And yes, I thought about the fact that they would perhaps perceive Easterners as thinking they were slightly superior, and that was important for me, because Lucy often mentions the feelings people have of inferiority and superiority.

BRC: Many novels that deal with poverty and abuse present their characters as victims or heroes (for transcending their past). Lucy, though, is neither, or maybe both. Can you comment on this?

ES: I’ve never been interested in writing about “good” people or “bad” people. It is simply people that interest me, and I think most of us are a combination of both, even if we think we’re not. And so this was important for me in writing Lucy’s story --- no heroes, no victims, just people who have their own story, who have their own wounds, as all people do.

BRC: Lucy and her mother seem to communicate mostly through stories about other people rather than their own shared past, and most of the stories have to do with failed marriages. Can you discuss why you linked the stories this way?

ES: Oddly, it was not until I had written many of the scenes of the mother and daughter’s conversations that I realized they were mostly about failed marriages. And then I did see this, and I thought: Well, that makes perfect sense, because Lucy’s mother has stayed in her marriage, and so she would be filled with talk of marriages gone bad.

BRC: Lucy’s mother’s “second sight” is almost a supernatural element. What is this attribute meant to imply?

ES: Lucy’s mother’s “second sight” came to me in the middle of working on this; it just popped out what day, and I looked at it and thought it spoke of the woman, especially in terms of her relationship with Lucy, because they are connected on a visceral level, and I thought that worked.

BRC: The book concludes with a positive vision of Lucy’s childhood home. Why did you end on this note?

ES: I didn’t know how it would end, as I don’t tend to write things from beginning to end, as I said. But when I came to that ending, it sounded truthful to me. Lucy has grown, she has had much of her life by the end of the book, and it seemed to me that as people age they often think of their pasts. Lucy would have had that simple yearning (at times) for what she came from, and she would visualize the fields and the sky as it became night.

BRC: MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON is 208 pages, short by typical publishing standards, yet it feels perfectly complete. Was its length a conscious decision, or a novella that grew, or simply the number of pages you needed to say what you wanted to say?

ES: The length was not a conscious decision. I felt like it was done. I felt that the style in which it had been written was a style that would not take any more; it had been said.

BRC: Did winning the Pulitzer Prize for OLIVE KITTERIDGE give you a sense that you could be more daring with subsequent novels? Conversely, did it put immense pressure on you? Or both?

ES: You know, I don’t know if winning the Pulitzer Prize made me feel I could be more daring. I did feel pressure, but the truth is no one puts as much pressure on me as I do on myself. So whatever I write, I want it to be as good as I can make it. 

BRC: What are you working on now, and when might readers expect to see it?

ES: I would love to talk about what I’m working on now, but I can’t --- it isn’t good for the work. The pressure has to build, and when I speak of it, that pressure leaks from it. I have learned this. Sorry!