Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout is another transcendent addition to Strout's work. She brings readers back to Crosby, Maine and Shirley Falls, Maine, where we are met with familiar characters from Strout's other novels: Olive Kitteridge, Lucy Barton, and Bob Burgess to name a few.
Ninety-one-year-old Olive is spending time with writer Lucy Barton during which they tell each other stories: true anecdotes about people they've known whose lives are unrecorded. The poignancy comes from this very fact which somehow lends the subjects authenticity. Through these tales to each other they ponder human nature and the lives they lead. As Lucy points out, "People are such mysteries. We are all such mysteries."
Lucy and Bob are friends. They meet by the river to take walks together and talk. Lucy thinks of Bob as a sin eater: meaning he gathers up humans that need help and takes them under his wing. Bob notices that Lucy really listens. He muses at one point that "in his adult understanding, people didn't really care, except for maybe one minute. It was not their fault; most just could not really care past their own experiences. But Lucy did." It is in this way that Bob and Lucy fall in love. This is complicated because Bob is married, and Lucy lives with her ex-husband.
Through these plotlines and other subplots, the minutiae, joy and heartache of human existence is chronicled. Here lies the great talent of Elizabeth Strout. At one point Lucy, referring to her and Olive's chats, declares, "People and the lives they lead are the point of the stories". Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout imparts this idea with aplomb.
This reader has fallen in love with every one of Strout's novels: her vivid, unforgettable characters and straightforward writing style make for compulsively readable books. Tell Me Everything gets five stars out of five. https://youtube.com/shorts/T9i5Dd5qvw4?si=4IY1mH30PK_pES73
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