Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout’s 10th novel, and it brings together her most beloved characters, who now dwell within the fictional town of Crosby, Maine. Key figures such as Olive Kitteridge, Lucy Barton and Bob Burgess will be familiar to long-time fans. Here, their stories thrum in sympathy.
As ever, Strout considers the secrets of small-town, majority white communities in New England, and the experiences that their inhabitants survive. Lucy, a renowned writer in her 60s, wants to gather these stories of devotion, abuse and pain, sharing them in conversations with Olive, who remains tart-tongued at 90. Equally poignant are Lucy’s interactions with the gentle Bob, a 65-year-old lawyer, who is steadfast in his efforts to care for those deemed unworthy by society.
Strout’s work treats the lives of regular people as remarkable. She observes the consequences of abject poverty; and the perennial sins committed by parents and their children, begetting cycles of neglect.
But through their dialogues, characters speak of their hopes for forgiveness, love’s many manifestations, and the healing power of listening. Admittedly, certain plotlines are perhaps too neatly resolved; and often, those who collect (and by consequence, narrate) the saddest stories are far more affluent than their subjects – though they are haunted by the hardship of their childhoods. But many lovers of Strout will be glad for this novel; for her ever-pellucid prose and the gracious quietude with which she congregates her fictions.
Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout is out now (Viking, £16.99). You can buy it from The Big Issue shop on Bookshop.org, which helps to support The Big Issue and independent bookshops.
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