Elizabeth Strout

I need to include as much as, you know, as I can take or the reader can take.

And what is that line?

Well, I think by the time the book was done, I think we were just really sliding into further chaos and so, you know, but I have been –

Well, you know, I mean, I used to live in Boston many years ago.

And so Massachusetts is not that far from me.

But culturally, it's very different.

And my husband and I drove down there.

We took a two or three day drive along the coast of Massachusetts because I always need visuals.

I need to see, you know, the place that Artie might live, the private road.

You know, I actually saw the man, Endicott Peabody.

I saw him with his golf bags.

I thought, okay, that's perfect.

There goes Endicott.

Perfect.

You know, so we had to, I had to see these things.

And one of the things that I saw there, which I had not remembered, and I'm glad we went, which you don't see in Maine.

are in the towns, you see these great big houses that are very close to the sidewalks because they're so old that the sidewalks, you know, were further away back when the house was originally built and the streets have gotten a little wider.

So these big old houses are really close to the sidewalks and that kind of thing was visually very important for me to capture.

What about the character of the place?

It's got its own vibe, you know, like, I mean, America has so many, oh, it's just got endless vibes going on, obviously.