In March 2020, the spread of a new virus everywhere and at full speed stopped the world. They remember, right? Elizabeth Strout (Portland, USA, 1956) had just written a book, Alas, William!, and decided to explore this new reality with the same characters. Now, in La Lucy a la vora del mar (Editions de 1984/Alfaguara) the writer resumes the life of Lucy Barton and her ex-husband William, to whom she has already dedicated a few novels, and makes them go to the state of maine There, they will cross paths with some of the characters from other novels, such as Olive Kitteridge (from the novel of the same name from 2008 or Light of February, from 2019) or Bob Burgess (from The Burgess Brothers, from 2013). He talks about it on the phone from his home in Maine.
Reading his novel takes us back to the beginning of the pandemic, when we knew nothing about it. Although not so long ago, we are far from it.
I had just finished Oh, William! and the pandemic began. 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 it all happened, 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 was still ringing 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 was trying to do it with the look of Lucy, who had never seen it.
He brings out old characters like Bob Burgess, who he becomes friends with, or Olive Kitteridge.
Bob already lived there! Let’s use it and have fun!, I thought. As with Olive.
But they don’t meet her.
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 she would appear, I’m working on it.
He says in the novel: “It is a gift in this life not to know what awaits us”. Is it valid for life and for writing?
Sure I wrote it with Lucy’s life in mind, but it’s the same in literature: I don’t have a set plan, I don’t make a map, I just write little scenes and then put them together. I try to get into the head of the people I’m writing about, as if I really and truly feel that I’m them, and then I’ll think about whether it means this or that.
Lucy always tries to understand others, even those who support Trump, with whom she does not agree at all…
Yes, he has this greatness of spirit, and he is able to absorb the experiences of many people as many could not. Try to think from the other person’s mind.
Maybe because she’s a writer?
I guess it’s a combination of factors, her being a writer is one thing, but it’s just that Lucy is like that, she’s special.
Do you think readers still think it’s about you? Because there are things he shares with the character…
I’ve said several times that I’m not her and luckily my past isn’t hers, but I’ve 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 the third year, who came from such a family. 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 so poor that they cannot buy a bar of soap. The kid went all red and I’ve 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.
It portrays very well the people who have felt humiliated in life, and connects it with the stormers of the Capitol of their country.
Yes, Lucy tries with her imagination to go as far as she can to understand how those people feel, until she realizes that they are Nazis, but before that she really tries to get inside their heads because she knows what it feels like 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 he actually says that in life “we are all confined. We always are.”
Yes, it’s Lucy’s mood at the time, although it’s a feeling that comes and goes, in someone with a past like hers. I imagine that such feelings never leave you, this feeling of isolation with which the visit often grew.
We all live more and more isolated, despite screens or because of them.
The pandemic has changed the world in a drastic way. 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 lost, but then she has a deep knowledge of people. She is like a naive visionary.
Yes, and it is one of the things that make her a special character. In some moments he sees everything and in others he knows nothing.
The book also talks a lot about classism in society.
Yes, all my books are about it. It is essential that people are aware of class differences, because we live more and more in our own bubble and we no longer know how others live and think, they are very different life experiences and this should be written about, because it can help people learn about 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, does it? I thought it was interesting, and I included the story also because it’s not a politically correct story: she doesn’t dare to publish it, and that says something about the world we live in.
