Elizabeth Strout

"Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn't spoken for many years, comes to see her and a simple hospital visit becomes a portal to the most tender relationship of all--the one between mother and daughter"--Provided by publisher.

"As a panicked world goes into lockdown, Lucy Barton is uprooted from her life in Manhattan and bundled away to a small town in Maine by her ex-husband and on-again, off-again friend, William. For the next several months, it’s just Lucy, William, and their complex past together in a little house nestled against the moody, swirling sea." --publisher's website.

'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.' And now Olive Kitteridge has indeed returned, as indomitable as ever, navigating her next decade and the changes--sometimes welcome, sometimes not--in her own life. Here is Olive stragely confident in her second marriage, in an evolving relationship with her son and his family, and crossing...

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • The beloved first novel featuring Olive Kitteridge, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of My Name is Lucy Barton and the Oprah’s Book Club pick Olive, Again

“Fiction lovers, remember this name: Olive Kitteridge. . . . You’ll never forget her.”—USA Today

“Strout animates the ordinary...

"At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities;...

"In the title story, a bystander tries to soothe a woman who seems to have cracked under the pressures of motherhood. And in several linked stories throughout, the relationship between the narrator and her husband unfolds in telling and often hilarious vignettes. Of their time and yet timeless, Wolitzer's stories zero in on the domestic sphere and ordinary life with wit, candor, grace, and an acutely observant eye. Brilliantly capturing the tensions...

The four-part drama tells the story of a seemingly placid New England town wrought with illicit affairs, crime and tragedy, told through the lens of Olive, whose wicked wit and harsh demeanor mask a warm but troubled heart and staunch moral center.

One of the Middle East's most celebrated writers, Rabih Alameddine, discusses his novel An Unnecessary Woman, an intimate and moving portrait of a reclusive book-loving 72-year-old Lebanese woman who views her complicated past through the lens of her favorite works of literature. In conversation with Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kitteridge). Mia Dillon will read an excerpt.