Author Elizabeth Strout Is at Peace With Aging

She says, ‘I don’t even actually care that much’

Gayle Jo Carter,

AARP

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Published September 06, 2024

Elizabeth Strout against a blue background

Leonardo Cendamo

Author Elizabeth Strout, 68, says that despite what people might think, her debut book was a long time coming. “Everybody said, ‘Oh, what an overnight success,’ ” she says of Amy and Isabelle, which became a best-selling novel when Strout was 42. “Nobody knew I was writing. I stopped telling people years ago because it was too embarrassing — it’s not like I had anything published — so everyone was surprised by it.”

Her third book, Olive Kitteridge, won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was adapted into an Emmy Award–winning TV miniseries; and her latest novel, Tell Me Everything, out Sept. 10, introduces Kitteridge to Strout’s beloved characters Lucy Barton and Bob Burgess. Strout shares with AARP the ups and downs of her writing journey, the advice she’d give to a young writer and how she feels about aging.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You graduated from the Syracuse University College of Law in 1982. What led you to choose law school?

I had a social conscience, and I thought, OK, I’m going to go and do good work. It was about that time some restaurant in Boston had been closed by lawyers for having been prejudiced against Black people. And I thought, Wow, lawyers can actually get that done. I was really impressed with that. So I thought, I’m going to go to law school, and I’m going to do that kind of work. And then I will continue to write at night. Which, of course, is pretty ill-advised.

That wasn’t a straight path either, was it?

I worked in a department store [in Syracuse] after I had dropped out of law school for a year. I wasn’t very good at it. They sent me up to sell mattresses on the eighth floor. I started on the second floor with women’s stuff, but I didn’t apparently sell well enough, and so they sent me up to mattresses. I never sold a mattress, so I went back to law school because I realized I was very interested in elderly people. The elderly women that would come into the store and stay in the women’s lounge the whole day were very, very affecting to me. I realized that they were lonely, that they had no place to go, and I thought, I’m gonna go back to law school, and I’m going to be an elder lawyer, and I’m gonna have a storefront right here on Main Street, and they can come and stay all day long if they want to. So that was my plan that got me back to law school to finish.

In her latest novel, Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to the lives of her beloved characters Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge and Bob Burgess.

Courtesy Random House

What made you pivot to writing?

I always wanted to be a writer, but nobody was even remotely interested in my work. I think I was about 16 [when] I started to send stories out [to publishers]. I could get nothing except the basic rejection notes for years. And so I was a little discouraged, I will admit. I was working as a waitress and a piano player and just doing millions of jobs. A lot of things I would try and do at night, so that I could have my days free.

Why do you think, after all those rejected works, that Amy and Isabelle landed?

I think I was just literally trying to find my voice. And that for all those years, I was writing like a writer, and not writing like myself.

How did you find your voice?

I got worn down, frankly. When I was writing Amy and Isabelle — [which] I had started as a short story, which, thank goodness, nobody published — but I kept going back to it, realizing I wanted to write this as a book. I remember thinking as I was writing it, Probably nobody’s going to read this. And that was a little liberating for me, even though I was always thinking about a reader.

Not only did it get published, it became a bestseller. How did that feel?

It’s interesting, because I was writing and I thought, Oh, I’m learning. It’s a little bit like learning to ride a bicycle, like I realized, Oh, I have this now. Now I know what I’m doing. And so I privately — I don’t even think I’ve said this publicly before — but I think that privately I kind of thought that it was a good book. Which doesn’t mean that it would have had the success it did, but I did sort of think it was a good book.

And here you are publishing your 10th novel at age 68. How does that feel?

I don’t think about it. It’s just weird.

Do you feel your age?

I don’t think that I do, and then, every so often I realize, Wait a minute, I’m 68 years old…. Like I just saw this woman walk by through the window, and she was really walking [fast], and I thought, Oh, wow, she’s really walking. And I thought, [I’m] probably never going to be able to walk like that again. She’s really striding. It doesn’t really bother me, but I noticed it. I still think of myself as somebody who takes those strides, but I don’t. It’s weird, because you’re so at odds with a certain sense of yourself, and yet you’re not. It’s like, Oh, I get it, I’m getting older. And then I look in the mirror and I think, Oh, you really are getting older. But I don’t even actually care that much. I would like to not look so old, but I do. And I think, OK, well, there you are. You’ve earned every piece of it.

What are your favorite books to read these days?

Back to the classics — books that I probably read when I was younger but haven’t read for maybe 20 years. So that’s what I tend to do. I realize that more and more. And I used to just rip through every single thing that was contemporary, but I noticed more and more, I don’t do that as much as I did. I just sort of seem to go back to the books that I had loved when I was younger.

When you’re not writing, what do you like to spend time doing?

Oh, I like to talk to my husband [James Tierney, 77, a former Maine attorney general and a lecturer at Harvard Law School]. I like to tell him little things I saw and stuff like that. When I have my friends here, I like to talk with them. I just like to be with people, but not that many people. I like to be with my good friends.

What advice would you give to a young writer?

I would say just keep going. Because we do get better at everything. Like anything, if you continue to do it, you generally get better at it. And so I would say to a young writer, just do not stop. Just keep going, keep going, keep going. Keep reaching for those sentences that you think will be the truthful sentences.

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