Welcome to Shelf Life, ELLE.com’s books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you’re on the hunt for a book to console you, move you profoundly, or make you laugh, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series, who, like you (since you’re here), love books. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too.
While Shelf Life has featured its share of JDs, none have, like Elizabeth Strout, also earned a gerontology certificate. Now the Pulitzer Prize-winning, NYT-bestselling author is out with her 10th novel, Tell Me Everything (Random House), featuring characters from previous books including Lucy Barton (My Name is Lucy Barton, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize and Women’s Prize; Oh, William!, which was shortlisted for the Booker; Lucy By the Sea), Olive Kitteridge (Olive Kitteridge, Olive, Again), and Bob Burgess (The Burgess Boys).
The Maine-born, -raised (she also grew up in New Hampshire and lived in NY for 30 years), and -based writer thought about becoming an astronaut or concert pianist (though she’d be a doctor if she could); took a “terrifying” standup comedy class and performed at the Comic Strip for the final exam (she killed!); attended Bates College, where she switched majors from theater to English, without having graduated high school; lived in England for a year after college; writes in a studio above a bookstore; is married to a former Maine attorney general, her second husband, who moved in after they met three times; sold mattresses at a department store; read John Updike at age 6 or 7; is one of Ann Patchett’s 3 favorite living authors; and likes to read more than one biography of the same person.
For someone who grew up with no TV (or newspapers or magazines except The New Yorker), she’s had 2 works adapted for the small screen, Olive Kitteridge for HBO starring Frances McDormand, which won eight Emmys (the idea for which came to Strout while loading the dishwasher), and Amy and Isabelle for Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films. My Name is Lucy Barton was adapted for the stage and starred Laura Linney directed by Richard Eyre.
Phobia: Snakes, that someone will read her journals (so she shreds them).
Fan of: Bailey Island in Casco Bay, doughnuts and telling secrets of old people.
Not so much: Sentimentality, cooking.
Bad at: Being a lawyer, sense of direction.
Good at: Listening (noted by Hilary Mantel), piano (one job was as a piano player at a cocktail bar). Take note of her book picks below.
The book that:
…kept me up way too late:
Stewart O’Nan’s West of Sunset. It is a fictionalized account of the last few years of Scott Fitzgerald’s life, and that book just slayed me. It was gorgeous and true and gave me a deeper understanding of all that man had suffered; boy, did I love that book. I still do.
...made me weep uncontrollably:
Lucy Gayheart by Willa Cather. When Lucy died, I was so sad! But here’s the thing: Then I read a biography of Willa Cather and I found out that she wrote to a friend about writing that book and she said she had to kill off the character because she found her so tiresome! Oh, that put me off—I mean I wish I had never read that part in her biography; I wish she had never said it because I loved that Lucy.
…I recommend over and over again:
The Collected Stories by William Trevor. They are so comforting and quiet and surprising. I have a copy upstairs and a copy downstairs, so I don’t have to go up and down to read them.
...I last bought:
Henri Troyat’s biography of Pushkin. I have read many biographies by Troyat of the Russian writers, and I was so excited to find that he had one of Puskin, so I bought it and it’s nice and fat. Bliss.
…currently sits on my nightstand:
And speaking of Pushkin, on my nightstand is a book of his short stories, which are a complete delight since he is mostly known as a poet. One of them called “The Stationmaster” had me in tears.
…helped me become a better writer:
The book that helped me become a better writer (although all the good books I read helped me) was The Journals of John Cheever. This sounds silly, but I learned how to write about weather reading that book, because Cheever records the weather in a way that is so atmospheric and made me understand how important it is.
…broke my heart:
Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. I have read it a number of times and every time I read it, the book breaks my heart more. The scenes of cruelty and the scenes of love and then the ending…..oh oh oh…
…is a master class on dialogue:
J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey. Or any of his books, really. I remember when I first read him years ago thinking, Wow, he gets dialogue down so perfectly.
...has the greatest ending:
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night. To see the character of Dick Diver change so much from the beginning of that book—a splendid man on the beach of the French Riviera—to the man at the end of that book, riding his bicycle through upstate New York, has always just blown me away.
...I’ve re-read the most:
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. I used to read it every few years since I first read it in college. I think I am finally done with it now though.
Read Strout’s Picks:
West of Sunset by Stewart O’Nan
The Collected Stories by William Trevor
Novels, Tales, Journeys by Alexander Pushkin
The Journals of John Cheever by John Cheever
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
