In March 2020, the spread of a new virus around the world and at full speed brought the world to a standstill. They remember, right? Elizabeth Strout (Portland, USA, 1956) had just written a book, Oh, William, and she decided to explore this new reality with the same characters. Now, in Lucy y el mar (Alfaguara / Edicions de 1984) the writer resumes the life of Lucy Barton and hers, her ex-husband William, to whom she has already dedicated a few novels, and makes them go to the state from Maine. There, they will meet some of the characters from other novels, such as Olive Kitteridge (from the 2008 novel of the same name or February Light, from 2019) or Bob Burgess (from The Burgess Brothers, from 2013). She is on the phone from her home in Maine.
Reading his novel takes us back to the beginning of the pandemic, when we knew nothing. Although not so long ago, it is far away.
It’s just that Ay, William had finished and the pandemic came. First I thought of writing an epilogue, and luckily I didn’t, because the pandemic lasted longer than we expected. I wrote the book as everything was happening, and I don’t think I’ve ever written anything so connected to what’s happening at the moment.
And the story of Lucy Barton continued.
Lucy’s voice still resonated a lot in my head. It was interesting to take them to Maine because that’s where I’m from, I know the landscape perfectly, and everywhere I looked I tried to do it with Lucy’s look, which she had never seen before.
Old characters like Bob Burgess, who he befriended, or Olive Kitteridge come out.
It’s just that Bob already lived there! Let’s use it and have fun! I thought. Same as with Olive.
But with her they do not meet.
Oh, we’ll see what happens… It could happen, although I don’t think I’ll write another book from Lucy’s point of view, it would just be a character and I don’t know how it would appear, I’m working on it.
He says in the novel: “It is a gift in this life not knowing what awaits us.” Is it valid for life and for writing?
I’m sure I wrote it thinking about Lucy’s life, but in literature it’s the same: I don’t have any set plans, I don’t make any maps, I just write little scenes and then put them together. I try to get into the heads of the people I write about, as if I really feel like I’m them, and then I’ll figure out if he means that or that.
Lucy always tries to understand others, even those who support Trump, even if she doesn’t agree with them at all…
Yes, he has this greatness of spirit, and he is able to absorb the experiences of many people in a way that many cannot. He tries to think from the other’s mind.
Maybe because she is a writer?
I suppose it’s a combination of factors, that she’s a writer is one thing, but that’s just how Lucy is, she’s special.
Do you think readers still think you’re talking about yourself? Because there are things that he shares with the character…
I have already said several times that I am not her and luckily my past is not hers, but I have met people like her. I grew up in two small towns, and there was always a family like his, so poor that the community kept them ostracized. I remember them well and I would like to give them a voice. There was a boy, in third grade, who came from one of these families. He sat in front of me and never said anything to anyone or anyone to him. One day, the teacher came up to him and told him that he had dirt behind his ears, and that no one is poor enough to not be able to buy a bar of soap. The boy blushed very much and I have never forgotten it. And when I was looking for Lucy I thought about these people, how to give them a voice, and that’s why I made her a writer. Maybe that’s why people think it’s me, but I can’t control what people think.
He portrays very well people who have felt humiliated in life, and connects him with the raiders of his country’s Capitol.
Yes, Lucy tries her imagination to go as far as she can to understand how these people feel, until she realizes that they are Nazis, but first she really tries to get inside their head because she knows what it’s like to feel humiliated.
One of the main themes of the novel is loneliness.
There has been a lot of loneliness during the pandemic, people couldn’t socialize, it was very hard.
In the novel, in fact, he says that in life “we are all confined. We always are.”
Yes, it’s Lucy’s state of mind at those moments, although it’s a feeling that comes and goes, in someone with a past like hers. I imagine that feelings like that never leave you, this feeling of isolation that the visit often grew up with.
We all live more and more isolated, despite the screens or because of them.
The pandemic has changed the world drastically. At least in New York, a lot of people don’t go to work anymore, they do it from home, and I don’t know how it will go in the long run, but it seems to me that people should be with people.
In some things, like the pandemic itself, Lucy seems to be lost, but then she has a deep knowledge of people. She’s like a naive visionary.
Yes, and it’s one of the things that makes her a special character. In some moments she sees everything and in others she knows nothing.
The book also talks a lot about the classism of society.
Yes, all my books talk about this. It is essential that people are aware of class differences, because we live more and more within our own bubble and we no longer know how others live and think, they are very different life experiences and we have to write about it, because it can help people to know each other’s points of view.
We see Lucy writing a story. Do you write like her?
It’s exactly what I would write, but that doesn’t mean I’m Lucy, huh? I found it interesting, and I included the story also because it’s not a politically correct story: she doesn’t dare publish it, and that explains things about the world we live in.
Catalan version, here