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Cloggie Downunder
Another moving, powerful read
Tell Me Everything is the fifth book in the Amgash series by best-selling, Pulitzer Prize winning American author, Elizabeth Strout. Lucy Barton and her ex-husband Willian Gerhardt have been in Crosby, Maine for two years now, having quit New York City at the start of the pandemic. They have a house, Lucy does some volunteer work and writes in her little studio in town, and William works on developing potato varieties resistant to climate change.
Lucy has a close friendship with Bob Burgess, himself returned to Maine from New York City some fifteen years earlier. Bob also does some volunteer work, caring for solitary elders, and a bit of legal work from his office in Shirley Falls, but each looks forward to their regular walks by the river where they talk, Bob smokes an illicit cigarette, and they understand each other very well. All manner of topics are covered: envy, knowing one’s partner, grief, the meaning of life. And about some things: “’Don’t think about it.’ And she smiled at him to indicate their joke about how they both thought of things too much.”
Now ninety, Olive Kitteridge is a resident of the Maple Tree Apartments where she makes sure to daily visit her best friend, Isabelle Goodrow, over the bridge in higher care. She’s heard about the author newly come to Crosby, make a point of reading her books, and decides she may have a story that would interest Lucy Barton. She’s initially unimpressed by this mousy-looking little woman, is a little sharp, but that changes as they spend time together.
Lucy and Olive begin exchanging stories of what they call unrecorded lives. Sometimes they are interesting, sometimes they seem to lack a point, but Lucy says “People and the lives they lead. That’s the point.” There are stories of family members, townspeople, and acquaintances whose lives contain thwarted love, cruelty, devotion, heartbreak, abuse, harassment, alcoholism, infidelity, sadness, and loneliness, but also beauty.
Somewhat in the background of life in Crosby, a woman who notoriously terrified the children when she was on school canteen duty, Gloria Beach goes missing while her youngest son Matthew is out getting groceries. A thorough search yields nothing, and investigations uncover a car hired with a stolen licence and credit card, the owner of which has a very strong alibi. The case goes cold.
When a body is found, months later, suspicion hangs over Matthew Beach. His sister, Diana begs Bob to take the case. When the woman’s will is located, it gives Matthew a motive, and it doesn’t help his case that Bob hears several women remark that they couldn’t blame him if he had killed her. Matthew is an enigmatic figure, a talented artist lacking social skills, but Bob is determined to help the man, even if he’s not telling the whole truth.
As always, Strout gives the reader a wonderful cast of characters with palpable emotions. Big-hearted Bob Burgess, unaware of his worth, excels at absorbing the suffering of others. In the course of the year, he loses a member of his extended family, almost loses another, tries to broker peace between a father and son, gives over and above care to a needy client, and, almost unwittingly, saves a good friendship from irreparable damage that acting on a crush would have wrought.
Lucy is now a grandmother but worries that she has become inconsequential to her daughters, while ageing Olive has lost little of her acerbic wit. Their chats are full of wisdom and insightful observations. Some people depend on a linchpin “I wonder how many people out there are able to be strong—or strong enough— because of the person they’re married to.”
Strout nails it on grief: “He was silently catapulted into an entirely new country, one he had never known existed, and it was a country of quietness and solitariness in a way that he could not—quite seriously—believe. A terrible silence seemed to surround him, he could not feel himself fully present in the world… And he understood then that this was a private club, and a quiet one, and no stranger passing him on the street would know that he was a member, just as he would not know if they were a member. He wanted to stop people he saw, older people especially who were walking alone, he wanted to say— Did your spouse die?”
Her writing, its quality, style and subject matter, is reminiscent of Sebastian Barry with shades of Anne Tyler. Strout writes about ordinary people leading what they believe are ordinary lives (although there are definitely some quirky ones doing strange things amongst them, like the vet giving a demented dog acupuncture) and she does it with exquisite yet succinct prose. Another moving, powerful read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Penguin UK Viking.
Cathryn_Conroy
An Extraordinary and Brilliant Book About Life, Love, and Hope
Oh, I just want to hug this book.
It is a book about nothing. And at the same time, it's a book about everything. It is a book about what people think and say and do. It is a book about how they treat one another in good times and bad. It is a deeply perceptive book about life and how we will be remembered.
It is extraordinary.
Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout, this is an imaginative culmination of almost everything she has written—the four books in the Amgash series featuring Lucy Barton, the two Olive Kitteridge books, and "The Burgess Boys"—pulling together the characters from those seven novels into one incredible story about friendship, love, healing, and hope.
Well-known novelist Lucy Barton and her ex-husband William Gerhardt are living together amicably in the small town of Crosby, Maine, along with grumpy Olive Kitteridge, who is now in a continuing care community, and Bill Burgess and his wife, the Unitarian minister, Margaret Estaver. Lucy and Bill go on long weekly walks, telling each other everything. It's a kind of emotional affair. Lucy visits Olive in the home where they exchange stories about people's lives, which they call "unrecorded lives." And Bill, who is an attorney, takes on a murder case defending a man named Matthew Beach whom prosecutors think killed his own mother by drowning her in a rented car in a nearby quarry. Matt has an odd hobby of painting nude pregnant women, which has caused some in this small town to think of him as a pervert, but the paintings are spectacular.
And that's pretty much the plot, such as it is. But that isn't the point. The point is in the characters, who are so genuine, so vivid, so vibrant you will think you know them in real life.
The brilliance of the story—the masterful ambition of it—is Strout's inimitable way of writing about life and feelings and emotions. I surmise that virtually every woman of a certain age will see herself somewhere in the story and in that moment will feel authenticated. It's that powerful!
There's just one really important catch: You must (must!) read those seven books mentioned in the beginning of this review before you read "Tell Me Everything." First, there are many references in this novel that would be spoilers from the previous books. Second, you won't understand the nuances of the characters if you don't know their full backstories. But what a treat awaits you with these eight Elizabeth Strout gems!
Bettie_Tullis
Elizabeth Strout doesn't disappoint
As one might imagine from the title, this book feels like you’re having a conversation with a friend, sharing the latest stories of the “unrecorded” people in your community. Strout tells you early on that this is a book about Bob Burgess, and it is, but it is also about those other characters in the greater Crosby, Maine area that we have come to love over the years: Olive Kittredge, Lucy Barton, the Burgess family, and many of the minor characters in her books. We see them, but more interestingly, they interact with each other. (People will ask, does one need to have read all the preceding books? No, you will get properly introduced, but you get an extra level of warmth from again seeing these old friends.)
One of the things I do appreciate about this book is that there are two major story arcs as well as several other minor ones. Sometimes Strout’s story lines have been more subtle, with the effect of feeling like you’re reading inter-related short stories. This is definitely a novel, a novel with a bit of mystery (murder mystery no less), romance, commentary on our world, and her trademark strong character development. It’s probably my favorite book she has written so far.
Thank you to NetGalley for the advance copy.
Anthony_Conty
You Will Learn Everything!
"Tell Me Everything" by Elizabeth Strout continues the interconnected stories of characters from her other novels. You can quickly jump into this book, even if you're new to Strout's work. Olive Kitteridge, literature's favorite misanthrope, plays a supporting role. If you're unfamiliar with the entire series, be prepared to revisit cast lists and names to understand each character's role in the Amgash series fully.
Though the protagonists are a few individuals, you'll immerse yourself in many names and stories. You'll encounter familiar characters like Bob Burgess, Lucy Barton, and Olive Kitteridge, each with a rich and compelling narrative. The story centers around a man accused of murder who seeks well-known Bob's legal counsel when his invalid mother turns up dead.
Bob suffers a personal loss while defending his client, so the fragility of his life plays a significant role. His professional interviews show multiple people affected by death very differently. Like most literary lawyers, he is battling his internal demons and throwing himself into his work to avoid dwelling on them. His dysfunctional marriage does not help matters much, either.
The scenes between Bob and Lucy (married to other people) grow on you because the author dares to make intimacy about something other than a physical relationship or casual sex. Olive's parts require a little background knowledge since you must deduce why she is such an influential figure in her lonely town. I highly recommend Strout's previous work for that.
The ending wraps up in a way that seems like the end of a significant party (and it is) in which everyone walks away with a better sense of who they are, even if the individual stories do not all have closure. You may enjoy other authors more, but few, if any, have Strout's character development ability and inherent storytelling.
Labmom55
An acquired taste
Elizabeth Strout is an acquired taste. She’s the queen of the interconnected, character rich stories. Many of her characters have shown up in multiple books and we, her readers, have gotten to watch them grow and age. Tell Me Everything has a whole slew of characters I’ve come to know and care about. Most of the characters are now in their 60s. Olive Kitteridge is now 90.
This isn’t a book where a lot happens (none of her books are). With age have come regrets, especially about marriages. One of the more interesting concepts is that of living with a ghost in a marriage. Characters tell stories about their pasts, others they have known, connections small and large. Olive and Lucy feel compelled to tell stories from the past - to have someone document these “unrecorded lives”.
Strout’s writing is always spot on, her ability to just describe a scene with just the right turn of phrase. Not lush, just succinct. It was a book where I found myself highlighting a lot of passages because they just made me think.
At times the book felt dark, but there are these flashes of lightness and hope. And love. It’s about folks doing the right thing, especially Bob Burgess. Or owning up when they didn’t do the right thing and asking forgiveness. Oh my, there was just so much meat to this book!
This is not a book that works as a standalone.
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