BOOK REVIEW: Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

 I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

Elizabeth Strout always digs deep into the hearts of her characters. They lead messy lives. They are flawed. But she portrays them and their situations with such compassion and realism that I’m always entranced. In her latest novel, Tell Me Everything, Strout returns to small-town Maine for a reunion of sorts with Olive Kitteridge, Lucy Barton, Bob Burgess, and a host of other familiar characters. Their lives are now intertwined. It is a post-pandemic world (though Covid is not entirely gone.) They’ve aged. They are, to some extent, taking stock of their lives. But they are also continuing to live those lives, encountering new dilemmas that must be resolved. There are new losses that must be adapted to. New friendships develop.

The novel dances around a murder mystery, but this is kept largely in the background. It’s not a detective story. Rather, the murder allows a more in-depth look at the type of person Bob Burgess is, as he takes on the defense of the main suspect.

More than this, the novel is about stories. Strout’s novels are always stories of people’s lives, but this book takes that one step further. Olive has heard of Lucy from Bob, and sends word that she would like to meet her to tell her a story, thinking she might be able to use it in her writing. (Lucy is a novelist.) They meet. Olive tells Lucy the story of her mother’s first love. This sets off a chain where the two meet and tell each other stories of “unrecorded lives.” The point being: everyone has a story.

The point is not an original one, but Strout does a superb job of showing the truth in this simple statement with a series of stories within the story. As always, this is a quiet book. Quietly intense. If you haven’t read Strout before, I’d recommend starting with an earlier book so that you can follow the lives of these people as they grow.