De Amerikaanse schrijfster Elizabeth Strout werd geboren op 6 januari 1956 in Portland, Maine. Elizabeth Strout studeerde na haar opleiding aan Bates College en een jaar studeren in Oxford rechten aan de Universiteit van Syracuse en studeerde in 1982 cum laude. Daarnaast behaalde zij ook een graad in de gerontologie en begon na het afstuderen met het schrijven van korte verhalen voor tijdschriften New Letters, Redbook en Seventeen. Ze publiceerde in 1999 haar eerste roman “Amy and Isabelle”, die werd bekroond met de Los Angeles Times Book Prize voor het beste deduut. De roman gaat over een moeder-dochter relatie in Massachusetts en de liefde van de minderjarige dochter voor haar wiskundeleraar. In 2001 werd een tv-film van het boek gemaakt. Na haar roman “Abide with me” (2005) had ze haar grootste literaire succes met “Olive Kitteridge” (2007). Voor deze roman over het leven-leven in Maine van de gepensioneerde wiskundeleraar Olive Kitteridge ontving zij in 2009 de Pulitzer Prize voor fictie en in 2010 de Premio Bancarella. De roman werd verfilmd in 2014 door Lisa Cholodenko voor televisie met Frances McDormand in de hoofdrol. Naast haar literaire carrière was Strout ook docent creatief schrijven aan Colgate University en aan Queens University of Charlotte.
Uit: Olive Kitteridge
“For many years Henry Kitteridge was a pharmacist in the next town over, driving every morning on snowy roads, or rainy roads, or summertime roads, when the wild raspberries shot their new growth in brambles along the last section of town before he turned off to where the wider road led to the pharmacy. Retired now, he still wakes early and remembers how mornings used to be his favorite, as though the world were his secret, tires rumbling softly beneath him and the light emerging through the early fog, the brief sight of the bay off to his right, then the pines, tall and slender, and almost always he rode with the window partly open because he loved the smell of the pines and the heavy salt air, and in the winter he loved the smell of the cold.
The pharmacy was a small two-story building attached to another building that housed separately a hardware store and a small grocery. Each morning Henry parked in the back by the large metal bins, and then entered the pharmacy’s back door, and went about switching on the lights, turning up the thermostat, or, if it was summer, getting the fans going. He would open the safe, put money in the register, unlock the front door, wash his hands, put on his white lab coat. The ritual was pleasing, as though the old store—with its shelves of toothpaste, vitamins, cosmetics, hair adornments, even sewing needles and greeting cards, as well as red rubber hot water bottles, enema pumps—was a person altogether steady and steadfast. And any unpleasantness that may have occurred back in his home, any uneasiness at the way his wife often left their bed to wander through their home in the night’s dark hours—all this receded like a shoreline as he walked through the safety of his pharmacy. Standing in the back, with the drawers and rows of pills, Henry was cheerful when the phone began to ring, cheerful when Mrs. Merriman came for her blood pressure medicine, or old Cliff Mott arrived for his digitalis, cheerful when he prepared the Valium for Rachel Jones, whose husband ran off the night their baby was born. It was Henry’s nature to listen, and many times during the week he would say, “Gosh, I’m awful sorry to hear that,” or “Say, isn’t that something?”
Elizabeth Strout (Portland, 6 januari 1956)