“[A] whole suppressed world of the spirit seems to be speaking in and through Strout’s characters, a spirit urging the slaves of conventional reality to awaken to their need of liberation. For all the depths of anger and despair they uncover, and the bitterness they attest to, Strout’s works insist on the superabundance of life, the unrealized bliss always immanent in it.”
Pankaj Mishra, “Writing the Other America,” The New York Review, November 4, 2021.“Reading Oh William! is a joy, a settling back into a beloved connection, hearing how her life has gone, what she’s up to now. But before we move on to Lucy, our conversation begins with the question of what’s going on now with her author.”
Jane Ciabattari, “Elizabeth Strout on Inhabiting Her Characters and Writing Directly,” LitHub, November 2, 2021.
“No one captures the nuances of complicated lives quite like Elizabeth Strout, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author who likes to return to her characters and their communities in sometimes surprising ways, as she does in her new novel, Oh William!. Elizabeth joins us on the show to talk about the world of Lucy Barton and her first husband William, writing with her readers in mind and reading with an open heart.”
Miwa Messer, “Poured Over: Elizabeth Strout on Oh, William!,” B&N's Poured Over (podcast), October 19, 2021.
“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. ”
Jennifer Egan, “Elizabeth Strout Gets Meta in Her New Novel About Marriage,” New York Times, October 18, 2021.
“‘What has motivated me for so many years to be a writer is the question: What does it feel like to be a different person?’
Like Ms. Strout’s other novels, Oh William! is primarily about how hard it is ever to know anyone, including ourselves. ‘Who we are is always mirrored back to us from different people, so our sense of self is always a little nebulous,’ she says.”
Emily Bobrow, “Novelist Elizabeth Strout Never Judges Her Characters,” Wall Street Journal, October 15, 2021.
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