Tell Me Everything
By Elizabeth Strout
Published 2024
Read Oct 2024
Since the publication of Olive Kitteridge, this reader has read all of Elizabeth’s Strout previously published books and now often reads her newest book as soon as her place in line at the library allows. For this book, an audio version was the first available and this reader devoured it. The audiobook reader was great, especially when Olive Kitteridge is speaking.
Yes, Olive Kitteridge is in this book along with all of the (still living) major characters from many of the pre-Olive books, Amy and Isabelle and The Burgess Boys, as well as the Lucy Barton books, My Name is Lucy Barton, Anything is Possible, Oh William, and Lucy by the Sea as well as some of the minor ones in those books. It’s not necessary to have read these previous books as the authors gives us sufficient background for the purposes of this book, but this reader’s experience was likely deepened having read them before this book.
Much of this book focuses on conversations between various characters as they tell stories to each other, generally about other people and occasionally about themselves. One such pair is Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge. Lucy Barton is a successfully published author of memoirs who is now living in the Crosby, ME area with her ex-husband, William. Lucy by the Sea told of their move there to escape the COVID-19 pandemic. Lucy and Olive become acquainted when Olive asks Bob Burgess to have Lucy visit her so Olive can tell Lucy a story. Lucy visits Olive at the senior living facility in which Olive, now 90, resides. Lucy and Olive meet with some frequency to tell each other stories of “unrecorded lives”. At one point Lucy is concerned about the purpose of the life of one of her friends who was the topic of Lucy’s story. Olive was not impressed that Lucy asked about the purpose of a life, and when asked by Lucy for Olive’s view, Olive tells her she and her husband shared the view that the purpose of life was to work hard and help people. This is one example of how the stories about people, which is a frequent part of most of Strout’s books, sometimes goes beyond just the story in this book into something deeper that the pair finds themselves discussing.
This book has a focus on Bob Burgess, who was first introduced in The Burgess Boys and who reappears in Lucy by the Sea. He takes on a murder case that is eventually resolved, he helps his brother, Jim, deal with his son, he helps his ex-wife deal with her alcoholism, he consoles his wife as she deals with her position as minister at a local church, and he walks and talks with Lucy Barton, something they started in Lucy by the Sea. Their regular walks cover a wide variety of topics and sometimes get quite philosophical. Their walks are very important parts of both Lucy and Bob’s lives. It becomes evident that Bob Burgess is an extraordinary person although he doesn’t realize it. He does things for people that truly make a difference in their lives, and he makes hard decisions that impact his own life just because it’s in his nature to do what he knows should be done.
This reader became aware of an article in the Oprah Daily about the book which had this information: “At the end of Oprah’s 107th Book Club pick, Tell Me Everything, by Elizabeth Strout, a character references an article called “Love Is Love” that helped her understand that “love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love. If it is love, then it is love.” The article publishes this article, which was originally published by Strout in German. It’s worth a read. It turns out there are many fine examples of love in Tell Me Everything which is definitely worth a read.
MarshaReads.com 