乐播传媒

Spring has sprung, cold gusts are kicking up grit, and novelist Elizabeth Strout 鈥�77 poses for the camera on a street in Portland, where she was born.

Strout is in the state promoting her new novel, Abide with Me, the story of the fall and redemption of a minister in a small Maine town (Random House). Tonight she鈥檒l appear at a South Portland bookstore. She鈥檚 done the publicity routine before: Her debut, 1998鈥檚 Amy and Isabelle, was a popular and critical favorite.

Novelist Elizabeth Strout ’77 was photographed last spring in Portland, Maine, by聽Phyllis Graber Jensen.

The slender Strout stands in the chilly shade of a building鈥檚 porch. Across the street the flat, strengthening sunlight of March bathes a row of wooden houses. It鈥檚 an Edward Hopper kind of light.

鈥淚 miss the way sunlight falls on Maine houses,鈥� she says. Strout is a longtime Brooklyn, N.Y., resident but lived much of her earlier life in Maine. And the state 鈥� its natural realm, its rhythms, its people 鈥� lives large in Strout鈥檚 novels.

Maine, she says, means 鈥渏ust about everything鈥� to her.

Her parents were born in Lewiston, a city Strout came to love while at 乐播传媒. Her father taught microbiology at the University of New Hampshire. Her mother taught high school writing and early on encouraged her daughter鈥檚 authorial aspirations. The family shuttled between Durham, N.H., and a house down a dirt road in Harpswell.

鈥淭hat鈥檚 where my parents鈥� sense of home was,鈥� Strout says, 鈥渟o that鈥檚 where my sense of home was.鈥� (Her brother, Jonathan, remains in Maine, a Freeport dentist and photographer.)

鈥淢y parents knew the names of all the trees and the wildflowers and the birds,鈥� she says, and were generous with that knowledge. 鈥淲e knew where the first violets could be found and knew what a cardinal鈥檚 call sounded like.鈥� Strout鈥檚 attunement to nature is a constant in her prose, as ornament, symbol, and psychological mirror.

鈥淚 find her Maine incredibly real. I鈥檇 put it in a league with Annie Proulx鈥檚 Wyoming,鈥� says publisher David Foster 鈥�77. In particular, Strout captures the way Maine 鈥渃an be so grand and so incredibly claustrophobic at the same time,鈥� he says. 鈥淧eople are physically distant, but because there aren鈥檛 very many, her characters are forced to confront one another day in and day out 鈥� not unlike eating at Commons.

鈥淵ou can鈥檛 hide in the crowd in Liz鈥檚 novels or in Maine.鈥�

Entering 乐播传媒 after her junior year of high school, Strout loved theater and majored in English. She studied creative writing with English professor James Hepburn, who, she recalls, at graduation offered her a bracing dose of reality about the writing game: 鈥淥nce you鈥檙e out of here, nobody will care whether or not you write another word.鈥�

After 乐播传媒, in England and America, Strout worked a veritable Yellow Pages of jobs 鈥� waitressing, performing as a nightclub pianist, selling mattresses, and working in the 乐播传媒 secretarial pool, to name a few.

She earned a law degree at Syracuse but didn鈥檛 like the work, and went on to teach English at Manhattan Community College. (She now teaches in a low-residency writing program at Queens University, Charlotte, N.C.). Strout published her first short story in 1982, and her byline has since appeared in Redbook, The New Yorker, and various literary journals.

But she reconnected emotionally with Maine only as she got into Amy and Isabelle. The story of a daughter and mother whose similarities bring them to a grinding conflict, it鈥檚 set in a depressed mill town during an oppressive summer. 鈥淚 began to realize, 鈥極h, there is your sense of literature and place,鈥欌�� she explains. 鈥淚t was enormously big.鈥�

The first novel, the author says, arose 鈥渘aturally and organically.鈥� Abide with Me was more deliberate, the product of Strout鈥檚 fascination with religion and with the ministry as a job, as opposed to a spiritual vocation. Set in 1959 in insular West Annett, upriver from the first book鈥檚 Shirley Falls, it depicts how his wife鈥檚 death affects the Rev. Tyler Caskey and his other relationships.

Young, capable, and well-meaning, Caskey 鈥渓oved people and they liked him back,鈥� Strout says. 鈥淗e thought that his life was going to go in a certain direction.鈥�

But no. The demise of Lauren, his wife, a rich girl ill-suited for hardscrabble West Annett, derails the preacher and all his relationships 鈥� except the one with his housekeeper, which goes weirdly deep even as it鈥檚 revealed that the pair, like Amy and Isabelle before them, share a life-changing secret.

Strout rejected as trite the notion of Caskey losing his faith. Instead, 鈥淚 was interested in Caskey losing his sense of self,鈥� she says, and in what she calls the 鈥渟tatute of limitations鈥� on grief: what happens when the congregation鈥檚 needs from Caskey overturn their sympathy for him?

It isn鈥檛 pretty. Strout鈥檚 vivid characters take umbrage over everything from his parenting to his taste in desserts. Abide with Me hits its climax when Caskey, trying to preach a sermon that will return the flock to righteousness or at least shut them up, fails spectacularly. It鈥檚 this failure that clears the air; hubris, for a change, plays to the hero鈥檚 advantage.

Jim Hepburn鈥檚 inoculation against hubris comes to mind hours after the photo session, at the bookstore in South Portland. Striking in a black suit and black-framed glasses, surrounded by stacks of Abide with Me, Strout is reading to 30 attentive listeners about Caskey and his housekeeper.

鈥淚鈥檓 just so glad to be able to write,鈥� Strout said earlier in the day. 鈥淥n a day when it goes well, like when you have a sentence you鈥檙e pleased with, it鈥檚 wonderful. There鈥檚 no feeling like it.鈥�

She adds, with a laugh, 鈥淎nd then there are all those days in between when things don鈥檛 go so well, and there鈥檚 no feeling like that, either.鈥�