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A review by slippy_underfoot
Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout
5.0
A brilliant, wonderful book.
If you’re a Strout fan all you need to know is that, in this book, Lucy Barton meets Olive Kitteridge, and it’s all you could hope for.
If you’ve not read her work - several previous novels/short stories feature Lucy and Olive - then this book is as good a place as any to start. Strout’s work is about people (often older ones) and stories, not so much about plot - so you don’t have to start at the beginning. She supplies what you need to know, and makes you curious to go back and learn more.
This is the story of Bob Burgess, his family, and friends.
Bob’s a good man, who doesn’t have this awareness of himself. A semi-retired attorney, keeping busy helping people in the small Maine town of Crosby, he takes regular walks with his best friend, recently arrived novelist Lucy Barton. They share a unique, intimate friendship, each sparking joy and comfort in the other, which they acknowledge in their hearts, but rarely discuss.
Lucy visits the elderly Olive Kitteridge, introduced by a mutual friend who knows of their shared love of stories. They take turns to tell stories they have heard, or from their own experience, of “unrecorded lives”, remarkable tales of ordinary people. These stories often come to reflect and comment, sometimes quite obliquely, on the events surrounding them.
Stories of unrecorded lives could be a description of Strout’s books, and Lucy’s and Olive’s exchanges reminded me of her short stories.
This is a beautiful book, told with Strout’s gift for powerful and vivid economy - not always a lot of words, but just the right ones. It reflects on the way in which our friendships, marriages, and relationships with our parents and children change as we get older, and it asks, how well can we know anyone else?
There is great warmth here, and such insightful humanity in Strout’s understanding of the small things that can kindle love (and loathing), and an awareness of the seams of tragedy which darken so many families, but which need to be borne for survival’s sake.
I absolutely loved it.
If you’re a Strout fan all you need to know is that, in this book, Lucy Barton meets Olive Kitteridge, and it’s all you could hope for.
If you’ve not read her work - several previous novels/short stories feature Lucy and Olive - then this book is as good a place as any to start. Strout’s work is about people (often older ones) and stories, not so much about plot - so you don’t have to start at the beginning. She supplies what you need to know, and makes you curious to go back and learn more.
This is the story of Bob Burgess, his family, and friends.
Bob’s a good man, who doesn’t have this awareness of himself. A semi-retired attorney, keeping busy helping people in the small Maine town of Crosby, he takes regular walks with his best friend, recently arrived novelist Lucy Barton. They share a unique, intimate friendship, each sparking joy and comfort in the other, which they acknowledge in their hearts, but rarely discuss.
Lucy visits the elderly Olive Kitteridge, introduced by a mutual friend who knows of their shared love of stories. They take turns to tell stories they have heard, or from their own experience, of “unrecorded lives”, remarkable tales of ordinary people. These stories often come to reflect and comment, sometimes quite obliquely, on the events surrounding them.
Stories of unrecorded lives could be a description of Strout’s books, and Lucy’s and Olive’s exchanges reminded me of her short stories.
This is a beautiful book, told with Strout’s gift for powerful and vivid economy - not always a lot of words, but just the right ones. It reflects on the way in which our friendships, marriages, and relationships with our parents and children change as we get older, and it asks, how well can we know anyone else?
There is great warmth here, and such insightful humanity in Strout’s understanding of the small things that can kindle love (and loathing), and an awareness of the seams of tragedy which darken so many families, but which need to be borne for survival’s sake.
I absolutely loved it.