Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

352 pages

Published September 2024 by Random House Publishing Group

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary: 

Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more—as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?”

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known—“unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them—reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.

My Thoughts: 

Elizabeth Strout is one of my favorite authors, an author whose books I will always pick up without even looking at the synopsis. I can be sure of intimate stories about marvelous, real characters. But what makes her books even more wonderful for me is the way she has managed to tie together characters from all of the books she has written. Olive Kitteridge. Lucy Barton. The Burgess Brothers. 

I love these people, with all of their quirks and flaws. I'm always happy to see them again, to pick back up with their lives and to meet the new characters that Strout puts into their lives. I'm a huge fan of Strout's dialogue and the one-on-one interactions between the characters. Here quiet Bob steps up, helping a man who is likely to be accused of his mother's murder. He's a strange, friendless man, the kind of person who might be ostracized by residents of a small town. But Bob works to get to know him, to defend him, to befriend him. And it makes all the difference, as it so often does in life. 

Olive asks Bob to introduce her to Lucy, who has relocated to Crosby with her ex-husband William during the pandemic. Olive has a story to tell Lucy. And so the two begin meeting periodically, telling each other stories about people they've met and situations they've found themselves in. At one point Olive asks Lucy what the point of the story is; Lucy replies "People and the live they lead." Which is exactly what the five books that include these characters are about. As with her other books, as with life, there aren't always clear and defined end points to the plot lines of this book. In this book, for the first time, it felt like that was a deliberate move to leave things open for more stories about these people. And, for the first time, I felt like it might actually be time for Strout to say goodbye to these characters. There are a lot of different stories here, all tied together, but also, if felt to me, holding each other back.