Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

When I saw the news on social media that Elizabeth Strout had a new book coming out, I immediately began lobbying for an ARC, not out of greed or professional desire, but I just couldn’t wait all the way to August 13th to read another Strout work of art.

Yes, I knew it would be a work of art BEFORE I read it, because, you know, it’s Elizabeth Strout.

Lucky me, Penguin Random House heard my pleas and sent me a digital ARC of Tell Me Everything to read and review.

I started reading this novel while traveling to my high school reunion, where I would see people from my senior class that I had not seen in (gasp) 50 years. Yet, once we started chatting, decades melted away and there we were, old friends reconnecting, catching up, all while being retired folks who are quite different than our 18-year-old selves.

And, that’s sort of what it’s like to pick up a new Strout novel and revisit the characters you have grown to know and love, along with some of the characters you have grown to know and dislike.

In Tell Me Everything, old favorites Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge meet up for the first time. At first, neither is sure about the other, but as their periodic visits continue, they develop a relationship fed by stories they tell to each other. These are stories of “unrecorded lives,” just ordinary people living ordinary lives that no one is paying much attention to.

Similarly, Lucy has weekly visits with Bob Burgess, a retired lawyer married to a church minister. They meet on the shoreline and walk along the water, telling each other stories, catching up on family news, and most importantly, really listening to one another.

Lucy, who at times is child-like and scattered, can turn on a mature, laser-like focus and get to the heart of the matter, the underlying and somewhat hidden message of whatever is being discussed, whether it be with Olive or with Bob. Both Olive and Bob notice this about Lucy, but they also know that this is “just Lucy.”

Lucy and Bob are the main threads that hold this novel together, and it is their relationship, unspoken and unrequited, that nearly tears this novel apart.

Don’t be mislead into thinking that this is a romance or anything like that. This novel covers some really dark and difficult ground. In fact, be advised that there is death and suicide in the storyline. It is all handled with the sparse and homey narration that is Strout’s secret weapon. She is a master at storytelling, at drawing you in immediately, and holding you firmly there until she is finished with her story.

When some writers use a gimmick or reoccurring gesture or catchphrase throughout a novel, it can be annoying, but with Strout, it is handled with deftness and subtlety. Many characters wave their hands in the air in a dismissive manner. Is that a Maine thing? It is a visual that works every time she employs it.

In some places, Strout breaks the 3rd person wall and shifts to the “royal we” which only adds to the homey feel of this book.

One thing I loved is Bob’s character development in this book. Bob is a laid-back kind of guy, slow to anger, but once he gets there, he is boiling over almost immediately, and we see it several times in this book, with his current wife, with his ex-wife, with his brother, with his nephew. I liked this new dimension to him, and it fit with the heavy emotional burdens he was carrying around, things going on with his brother, his sister-in-law, his ex-wife, his friendship with Lucy, and his childhood trauma that is further explored here.

I loved this book, as I have loved all of Strout’s works, but I did find Tell Me Everything challenging to read. Lucy and Olive had very sad childhoods. So did Bob and the young man he takes on as a client. The stories that Lucy and Olive, and then Lucy and Bob, share with each other are heartbreaking, the real-life events of the other characters are tragic. But, Strout has a way about her, a true talent at lifting you up out of that darkness into a new realization of what it means to be loved, of what it means to be touched, of what it means to be remembered, to have your life recorded.

Thank you, Penguin Random and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review another Elizabeth Strout masterpiece!

UPDATE: Just announced today – 9/10/24 – this lovely book is #107 of Oprah’s Book Club!