Matt Cooper

Her books...

The Olive Kitteridge books, Lucy Barton books have become very great favourites with Irish audiences.

And we're delighted that Elizabeth Strout is with us now to talk about her new novel, The Things We Never Say.

Elizabeth, you're very welcome.

Now, I've read The Things We Never Say and it's my favourite novel of the year so far.

It is absolutely terrific.

It's lovely, short, beautiful story.

I'm not going to ruin it for the listeners by telling them what it's all about.

Will you tell, what were you doing with this book?

You used the word ordinary there.

I suppose this is your thing, isn't it, about ordinary people having to face extraordinary circumstances.

Yeah, but it is the whole point.

And you develop in the book as well, there's a lot of discussion between Artie and his son about free will.

As to whether you can actually dictate your own life and your own circumstances or whether things happen to you and then how you actually deal with the things that happen to you.

You haven't come to a conclusion on that?

Because it's the unexpected.

How many people have lives that they have mapped out for themselves?

The other thing that really comes across of the many themes in the book as well is that how well do we really know the people that we think we know?

Precisely.

So why did you develop that theme?