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Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

howardwthompson
Book cover of Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

Tell Me Everything

This is the 5th in Elizabeth Strout’s Amgash series which is mostly about Lucy Barton. This novel revolves around the relationship between Lucy and Bob Burgess who are good friends that see each other in much deeper ways than their significant others.

After they parted, Bob though again of how eh had told both his wives his memory of saying to his mother that he had never really liked Christmas and how both of them had been kind but not – to Bob’s mind – really been able to care. And he thought now as he bought a jug of orange juice, That’s just how it is, that’s all. He thought: God, we are all so alone.
BUT – LUCY. She did not make him feel alone. He realized this as he walked to the register. [Chapter 10]

Lucy is driven by the need to document the unwritten stories of the people in the world and shares some of those stories with Olive Kitteridge – the quintessential Maine curmudgeon. At one point Olive says to Lucy:

‘Lucy, you’re a lonely little thing.’
Lucy looked up at her quickly. She said ‘Who is not lonely, Olive? Show me one person.”
Olive said, “Plenty of people. All the snot -wots who live here and gather every day in the lounge for their glass of wine with each other. They’re not lonely.”
“How do you know?” Lucy bit her lower lip, and then she said, “How do you know what those people think about in the dark when they wake up in the middle of the night.”
Olive had no answer for her. [Chapter 3]

Another plot point is about Matt Beach, a young man who is suspected of murdering his mother Gloria Beach (who was known as Gloria Bitch because she was so mean). But, sometimes – often? – people we see as evil may just be broken.

We can never really know anyone – and sometimes not even ourselves. But sometimes you may be lucky enough to have a person in your life who can see you.

This is really a lovely book and I was charmed more by it in my look back on it last night as I was preparing this post. If you are in the grips of the Amgash series, you will read this. If you are not, then I think there are other novels by Elizabeth Strout you can start with: Olive Kitteridge is Strout’s Pulizter Prize winner is a great place to start. My two favorite novels from Strout are The Burgess Boys and Amy and Isabelle; both stories are how one event can spin lives into new paths. I think you’ll get much more from Tell Me Everything if you read The Burgess Boys first.

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