The Burgess Boys - Rilegato

'Elizabeth Strout, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for her 2008 novel Olive Kitteridge, has an extraordinary talent for homing in on the dropped stitch in the family fabric, and family is what The Burgess Boys is really about... a family's idea of itself, and the essential frailty of the things it holds up as certainties... The beauty of this novel lies in the sense of the past being littered with unexploded bombs. You know precisely where to find them, because Elizabeth Strout makes sure they are staring you in the face, but she sets them off in disturbing and unexpected way' Literary Review --Literary Review

'As a portrait of a family struggling to balance the accumulated tensions and resentments of a half century with the pull of kinship that never quite overrides them, [The Burgess Boys]feels so truthful it will sometimes make you gasp. As a portrait of a community struggling to come to terms with the consequences of globalisation, decline, and immigration from cultures that don't want to assimilate, it feels fiercely urgent. This is as much a state-of-the-nation novel as one of small-town life. Elizabeth Strout writes with a lyric simplicity that thrusts you into the heart of each character's life and world...[her] empathy ... radiates out to every corner of her world. She shines a light but she doesn't judge. [Strout] has written a novel that makes you feel: this is what it's like to be alive' Sunday Times --Sunday Times

Elizabeth Strout's tenure as a lawyer (six months) was slightly longer than her career as a stand-up comedian (one night). She has also worked as a bartender, waitress and piano player at bars across the USA. She now teaches literature in New York, where she lives with her husband and daughter.