Welcome to Literary Friction. I'm Carrie Plitt, here as always with my co-host, Dr. Octavia Bright.

How are you, Octavia? I'm a doctor.

That's how I am.

I've heard, yeah. Stop it, I'm embarrassed. I'm very well. I was actually just thinking what I was going to say when you asked me how I was. And my answer is I'm very well because I have a really warm coat. And it just makes everything better when it's cold. Yeah, Eddie always makes fun of me for how much I love my puffy giant coat, but I really love it.

Yeah.

The like enveloped in the warm blanket of the coat is a wonderful feeling.

Yeah, it is.

And when it's sunny and beautiful outside like it is today and you're in a warm coat, it's just everything's good.

It's good.

I agree. I'm well. I'm

temperate. It's nice. How are you? Also well and temperate. Not a doctor. Oh, stop it.

And I'm really excited for today's show, which is all about returning. So not returning books to a library.

Oh my God. I ad-libbed that, actually. I loved it.

Instead, we're asking, why do authors from William Faulkner to John Updike and Hillary Mantel to Margaret

Atwood return to the same characters and places again and again? What can a trilogy do that a solo book can't? And

why do we get so excited and also a little bit nervous when these returns happen? To help us

answer these questions, today we have an incredibly special guest, incredibly special because

she's one of my favorite authors, Elizabeth Strout. Her latest book, Olive Again, is a return to the

complicated character of Olive Kittridge and her community in Crosby, Maine. Octavia, do you want to

introduce Elizabeth a little bit more for our listeners? Sure, Carrie. Elizabeth Strout,

in case you don't know her, is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Olive Kittridge, as well as

The Burgess Boys,

...