Mary Morrissy on Elizabeth Strout and Lucy Caldwell

When you’re in the midst of writing you don’t necessarily know what influences will
rub off on your work. But two writers I was reading while building the collection of
stories that became Twenty-Twenty Vision were Elizabeth Strout and Lucy Caldwell.

Anything is Possible (2017) is a novel in stories from Strout featuring Lucy Barton,
her eponymous heroine, and the world of her impoverished childhood which was
hinted at in Lucy Barton but never made manifest. The stories are loosely bound
together – with the emphasis on loosely. Strout’s writing seems vernacular and
casual, spun rather than constructed. Sometimes after reading one of her books, it’s
hard to even remember the major plot points and yet you’ve been compelled to turn
the pages. There’s an interior propulsion that she achieves without you noticing,
which means there’s a lot of authorial pedalling going on under the surface.

The other writer I read during the compilation of Twenty-Twenty Vision was Lucy
Caldwell. I’d already read her knockout debut collection Multitudes, but with her next
two collections (Intimacies and Openings) she’s honed and refined her craft. These
are missives from the front, which I think of as the territory of the short story. She
can make a short story out of seemingly nothing – and I mean that in a good way. A
conversation between writers after a festival, a debate between new mothers about
Monica Lewinsky, a student taking an abortion pill, and yet her writing, like Strout’s,
gives ordinary events real heft, while the writing remains light and allusive - like a
spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.

Twenty-Twenty Vision is written in a more relaxed style than I’ve previously
employed – I’ve surrendered some of my authorial grip and overcome my fear of
becoming wayward. What I see in Strout and Caldwell’s work is that it’s in the
digression the story will often become expansive and that a more open weave allows
the story to breathe and more ideas to get through the net.

Mary Morrissy, 2025.