elizabethstrout.com » Reviews

Reviews for Abide With Me

admin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:12:13 +0000

“Strout has created an absorbing world peopled by characters who argue the merits of canned cranberry sauce and using one’s turn signal; meanwhile, dark fears about Freud and Khrushchev run beneath the surface of their lives like water under ice. With superlative skill, Strout challenges us to examine what makes a good story—and what makes a good life.”
- The New Yorker

“Dark as much of this beautiful novel is, there's finally healing here, and, as Tyler should have known, it comes not from strength and self-sufficiency but from accepting the inexplicable love of others. In one beautiful page after another, Strout captures the mysterious combination of hope and sorrow. She sees all these wounded people with heartbreaking clarity, but she has managed to write a story that cradles them in understanding and that, somehow, seems like a foretaste of salvation.”
- The Washington Post

Reviews for Amy and Isabelle

admin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:00:53 +0000

“One of those rare, invigorating books that take an apparently familiar world and peer into it with ruthless intimacy, revealing a strange and startling place.”
- The New York Times Book Review

“Strout's insights into the complex psychology bewteen [mother and daughter] result in a poignant tale about two coming of age.”
- Time

“Impressive....Strout writes with abundant warmth.”
- People

“Poignant...sensitively imagined...[Amy and Isabelle] recalls the elgegiac charm of Our Town.”
- The Christian Science Monitor

“Stunning....Every once in a while, a novel comes along that plunges deep into your psyche, leaving you breathless....This year that novel is Amy and Isabelle.”
- San Francisco Chronicle

“A novel of shining integrity and humor, about the bravery and hard choices of what is called ordinary life.”
- Alice Munro

“Excellent....Strout's collective portrait...remains unflaggingly engaging....[W]hat a pleasure to gain entry into the world of this book.”
- The New Yorker

“Lovely, powerful...a kind if modern 'Rapunzel'.”
- Newsweek

“Amy and Isabelle is an impressive debut....with an expansiveness and inventiveness that is the mark of a true storyteller.”
- Philadelphia Inquirer

Reviews for Olive Kitteridge

admin — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:08:30 +0000

“Olive Kitteridge is an often-painful book to read because of its insistence on life's sharper realities, but that is precisely what makes it such a gratifying stunner.”
- The Boston Globe

“Funny, wicked and remorseful, Mrs. Kitteridge is a compelling life force, a red-blooded original. When she’s not onstage, we look forward to her return. The book is a page-turner because of her.”
- San Francisco Chronicle

“Perceptive, deeply empathetic . . . Olive is the axis around which these thirteen complex, relentlessly human narratives spin themselves into Elizabeth Strout’s unforgettable novel in stories.”
- O: The Oprah Magazine

“Fiction lovers, remember this name: Olive Kitteridge. . . . You’ll never forget her. . . . [Elizabeth Strout] constructs her stories with rich irony and moments of genuine surprise and intense emotion. . . . Glorious, powerful stuff.”
- USA Today

“Olive Kitteridge still lingers in memory like a treasured photograph.”
- Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Rarely does a story collection pack such a gutsy emotional punch.”
- Entertainment Weekly

“Strout animates the ordinary with astonishing force. . . . [She] makes us experience not only the terrors of change but also the terrifying hope that change can bring: she plunges us into these churning waters and we come up gasping for air.”
- The New Yorker

“...the collection is easy to read and impossible to forget. Its literary craft and emotional power will surprise readers unfamiliar with Strout.”
- Publisher's Weekly

“Though loneliness and loss haunt these pages, Strout also supplies gentle humor and a nourishing dose of hope. People are sustained by the rhythms of ordinary life and the natural wonders of coastal Maine, and even Olive is sometimes caught off guard by life’s baffling beauty.”
- Booklist