It’s hard to choose among my favourite authors, and maybe a Favourite favourite isn’t necessary, but boy does Elizabeth Strout make a strong case for being my Favourite. I saved this one for a weekend when I knew I needed a book to keep me and it doesn’t fail in this promise.
Following Artie Strout in his years of teaching high school, in his discoveries about himself and his family, his desire to die and then to live, and the small moments throughout it all that make Strout unrivalled in being so spectacular. The book deals a devastating blow midway through (and in a parenthetical aside, no less) that let’s the form do what the theme is insisting: that the things, the people, the moments that shake and shatter your life are rarely those that you Expect in a Big Way, but are rather the things you didn’t see coming excpet sideways, or happened so quietly you didn’t realize they were going to resonate quite so much, or are when someone pulls you aside and bam hits you with information that tilts everything you thought you knew.
From a family of educators it was also a book about the impact and beauty of teaching. And as a student who still – often – thinks with such gratitude of the teachers that shaped me in ways they probably also thought of as parenthetical to the rest of their work, it is a book that reminds us all of the influence we wield, whether we recognize it as such or not.
And a book about believing – against all odds and evidence in this moment – that people can be more than their worst moments. That we might all, somehow, be able to come out of our current set of interlocking crisis if only we could do so together, and with something like care for one another, or if not ready care, then an optimism that we might be able to be better. Together.
All to say: I really, really liked it.
