Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

Elizabeth Strout is one my favorite writers. As many of you know, her books focus on a group of characters anchored in Maine, but with ties to New York and even Illinois. In Tell Me Everything, Strout’s most famous character, Olive Kitteridge, is living in a nursing home. The books title comes from stories that are mostly shared between Kitteridge and Lucy Barton. Barton is another main character in the Strout oeuvre.

The stories are small, tight arcs that focus on people’s everyday. They tell each other of loves, loss, miscues and leaps of faith that form the paths of our lives. The stories focus on the neighbors and acquaintances and seemingly ordinary people, but I found myself as eager as either one of them to hear the tale.

Parallel to the story telling is a focus on Bob Burgess, his wife Margaret and Lucy and her ex-husband William. Lucy and Bob have become good friends. And their conversations and thoughts and interpretations of those conversations, form the crux of the narrative that moves the novel along.

And that’s the key to this book and Strout’s heartbreaking writing. The stories are a bit seemingly ordinary people, but the emotions, struggles and lives they lead are as intricate and meaninful as anyone.

Author
Elizabeth Strout is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Lucy by the Sea; Oh William!, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Olive, Again; Anything Is Possible, winner of the Story Prize; My Name Is Lucy Barton; The Burgess Boys; Olive Kitteridge, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Abide with Me; and Amy and Isabelle, winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in London. She lives in Maine.

From the Same Shelf
Olive Kitteridge (2008)
My Name is Lucy Barton (2016)