©Leonard-Cendamo
Books by Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth Strout is an American author who has written numerous bestselling and critically acclaimed books. Her third novel, Olive Kitteridge, won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize, and was later adapted as a television miniseries for HBO. Oh William!, which features the beloved recurring character Lucy Barton (first seen in My Name is Lucy Barton), was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. Below, you’ll find our suggested reading order for Elizabeth Strout’s novels, put together by Isabel Camara. Strout’s latest novel, Tell Me Everything (2024, pictured top) brings the characters from her other novels together:
Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout
🏆 Winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Elizabeth Strout’s novel, Olive Kitteridge, published in 2008, follows the life of an acerbic retired schoolteacher and her husband in a small coastal town in Maine. Olive is refreshingly not a people-pleaser. The novel has been made into an award-winning TV series starring Frances McDormand. The unsentimental journey of Olive Kitteridge continues in Olive Again which was published in 2019.
Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel-in-stories offers a detailed portrait of the title character: a somewhat difficult and abrasive former schoolteacher in smalltown Maine who keeps her emotions under wrap. But over the course of thirteen short stories, all set in the same community, we unpeel the layers of her and her neighbours’ lives until we find at the heart an engaging, multi-dimensional character who appears differently when viewed from any direction. Not a light-hearted read, this, but a rewarding and tightly-woven one that more than deserves your time.
From our article Books like Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
My Name is Lucy Barton
by Elizabeth Strout
My Name is Lucy Barton was published in 2016 and was a New York Times bestseller. While she’s recovering from an operation Lucy Barton is visited by her mother, whom she’s not spoken to for years. It is not a novel you read for the plot, but for the brilliant subtleties of emotion and memory. In this novel, Strout explores the themes of childhood, poverty, and marriage. Oh William and Lucy by the Sea, published in 2021 and 2022, continue Lucy Barton's story.
Oh William!
by Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth Strout returns to Lucy Barton’s story in Oh William, but now with a focus on her later life and her relationship with her ex-husband, William. Lucy and William reconnect, forcing Lucy to reflect upon their relationship, and their future.
Lucy By the Sea
by Elizabeth Strout
Lucy by the Sea is Strout’s most recent novel of her Lucy Barton books. It is a moving story of Lucy’s experiences of lockdown and Covid-19; being uprooted from her life in New York, living with her ex-husband William, and worrying about her children. While it is best to read Strout’s Lucy Barton books in sequence, they do stand alone.
Amy and Isabelle
by Elizabeth Strout
Amy and Isabelle is Elizabeth Strout’s first novel. This novel is set in the fictitious town of Shirley Falls and follows Isabelle and her teenage daughter Amy over an intense, hot summer. Strout seamlessly weaves Amy and Isabelle’s separate experiences, feelings and secrets. Their relationship becomes increasingly strained and becomes almost uncomfortable to read at times.
The Burgess Boys
by Elizabeth Strout
The Burgess Boys, Jim and Bob, return to their hometown of Shirley Falls (the setting for Strout’s first novel, Amy and Isabelle) when their sister’s son is accused of a hate crime. Family secrets return to the surface.
Interviews where books by Elizabeth Strout were recommended
Notable New Novels of Fall 2022, recommended by Cal Flyn
Fall is a busy time in publishing, as the biggest names in fiction prepare to release new books in the months leading up to Christmas. Here, Five Books deputy editor Cal Flyn rounds up some of the most notable novels of Fall 2022—including two new books from the great American novelist Cormac McCarthy and a sumptuous work of historical fiction from Maggie O’Farrell.
The Best Fiction of 2022: The Booker Prize Shortlist, recommended by Neil MacGregor
The Booker Prize is awarded each year to the best original novel written in the English language. We asked the art historian Neil MacGregor, chair of this year’s judging panel, to talk us through the six novels that made the 2022 shortlist—and why fiction can be a most effective means of engaging us emotionally in social and political crisis elsewhere. See the Booker Prize shortlist 2024.
Notable Novels of Fall 2021, recommended by Cal Flyn
Five Books deputy editor Cal Flyn offers a round-up of the notable novels that need to be on your literary radar in Fall 2021, including the hotly anticipated new book from Sally Rooney—set to dominate bestseller lists in the coming weeks—as well as eagerly awaited follow-ups from Richard Osman and Elizabeth Strout, and a return to more traditional fiction from Karl Ove Knausgård.
