Word: strout
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...plays a prominent role in some of the stories and a small one in others. While Strout’s characters find themselves in a variety of predicaments related to everything from aging to intimacy to parenthood, they are all connected by the common thread of challenge and endurance. Strout is able to take the loneliness and disillusionment felt by a young woman abandoned on the day of her wedding and that of an elderly woman realizing her long-time husband’s infidelity, and show how the feelings of these different characters are connected. They are both rooted...
...teenager's sexual awakening creates tension between her and her secret-keeping, young single mother: it's like Gilmore Girls done as domestic drama. This quiet story, based on Elizabeth Strout's novel, might never have aired without Winfrey's name. That may be why the film ramps up the melodrama; between the moody imagery and eerie music, you'd think you were watching a '70s horror flick. But the understated leads shine. Elisabeth Shue brings out mom Isabelle's repression without turning her into a mere set of conventions; Hanna Hall plays Amy with a subtle concupiscence that recalls...
Elizabeth Strout tests the strength of that umbilical bond in her first novel, Amy and Isabelle (Random House; 304 pages; $22.95). In the small New England town of Shirley Falls, Isabelle Goodrow is a single mother with a shameful secret: her daughter Amy, 16, is illegitimate. As if in atonement for her youthful fling, Isabelle is now, in her early 30s, the image of propriety, maintaining perfect posture and an immaculate French twist. She craves respectability but is too poor for the upper echelon of Shirley Falls and too proud to befriend her co-workers at the mill. Amy shares...
Mother and daughter become rivals, and the balance of power between them shifts inexorably in favor of Amy as she, not Isabelle, discovers love. For Isabelle, it is painful recompense for what she considers a lifetime of sacrifice. Strout's insights into the complex psychology between the pair result in a poignant tale about two comings of age. Amy blossoms with a heady awareness of her sexuality. Meanwhile, Isabelle forgives herself the past, even as she faces its consequences: "It was bewildering to Isabelle. Bewildering that you could harm a child without even knowing, thinking all the while you were...
...circulation from 325,000 to about 140,000, had cut annual losses from $2.4 million to $300,000. Nonetheless, last week Kinsley gave up one of the most visible jobs in magazine journalism for one of the more anonymous: starting in September, he will replace the revered Richard Strout, who retired at 85 after four decades as the pseudonymous TRB columnist for the weekly New Republic (circ. 96,000). Said Kinsley: "Some people think I am crazy, but writing a column is a journalist's dream, and this one seems to come open once every 40 years...