Let me make something perfectly clear: this is a great book, high praise for the author of Olive Kitteridge and other literary masterpieces. The story is often profoundly simple, and there are descriptions of exquisite small events that will take your breath away. Artie is a 57-year-old married high-school history teacher with one son. What happens when he learns a family secret? Has he been living a lie? What does Artie do with this knowledge? Thus, the story becomes a meditation on sadness, loneliness and yes, melancholy; in other words, this is a moving exploration of what it is to be human. And finally, the book title is perfect!
Tag: Elizabeth Strout
Tell Me Everything – Elizabeth Strout
Sometimes a new book by a favourite author can only be described as an exquisite pleasure. Ms. Strout’s novel returns to the town of Crosby Maine with a beloved cast of characters: the iconic Olive Kitteridge, lawyer Bob Burgess, and the author Lucy Barton. This is a story of empathy and pathos; the intimacy of shared stories and experiences; the importance of being seen so one’s life is not unrecorded; the paralysis of grief; the relationship between friendship and love; loneliness, sadness and beauty; and finally the significance of the very human desire to leave a mark on the world.
Olive Again – Elizabeth Strout
This is a sublime sequel to Ms. Strout’s exquisite Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteredge. Olive remains a somewhat difficult, direct, honest but unfiltered and often irascible character. Her relationship with her second husband, her son from her first marriage, and the townspeople in a seaside town in Maine are, not surprisingly, complicated but entertaining. The stories show a delightful ordinariness of people. And finally, the book has a powerful treatise on ageing and (the lack of) self-awareness. A superb read.
Anything Is Possible – Elizabeth Strout
Strout wrote the incomparable Olive Kitteridge (Pulitzer Prize) and the very fine My Name Is Lucy Barton. This new novel is set in a small town in Illinois, the actual home of Lucy Barton. A series of inter-connected stories have links to Lucy Barton, and Lucy actually visits her brother and sister in one chapter after years away. The stories centre on a series of confessional conversations and introspective remembrances that are compelling and captivating. There is an artful simplicity in Strout’s writing; a story about a B&B encounter is exquisite. Overall, this is a great read.
My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
This is a beautiful book. Elizabeth Strout writes like Elizabeth Hay, with great economy so there are no superfluous words. Part of Lucy Barton is about the relationship between a daughter and her mother; they reminisce during a 5-day hospital visit during an extended hospital stay for Lucy. But it is much more than that – about life under difficult circumstances and how that changes the meaning of love. This is a book that EVERYONE should read. Strout previously wrote the magnificent Olive Kitteridge.
