I think I might just prefer Strout’s Olive Kitteridge series to the Lucy Barton series - if not just for the incredibly stubborn but loveable ways and witticisms of Olive Kitteridge, who is a rather different woman to the more pensive and slightly troubled character of Lucy Barton.

Strout has a real flair for capturing the daily reality and emotions of the many characters in her short story collections. While the content is quite often dark or distressing to read, as the characters reflect on childhood trauma (cw: sexual harassment) and strained relationships, Strout’s writing is engaging and very much brings the reader into the heart of life in small-town America. The ways the characters are linked together, and connected to Lucy Barton, are often unassuming and unexpected, reflecting life’s often coincidental and bizarre turns of fate which determine each of our own social connections.