BookLife Review: Tell Me Everything (Elizabeth Strout, author) by Carol O'Day
Literary fiction, Oprah Book Club 2024, Pulitzer Prize author, Maine, small town, murder mystery, mature and senior characters, loneliness, listening, aging, friendships, marriage, siblings, death.
Pulitzer Prize recipient and 2024 Oprah Book Club author, Elizabeth Strout, delivers another poignant exploration of the human penchant for loneliness and connection. Tell Me Everything, features a quietly engaging and eccentric ensemble of characters living in Crosby, Maine. The novel is populated with recurring characters from other works by Strout. The ornery but soft-inside Olive Kitteridge, now 91, Lucy Barton herself, and Lucy’s first husband and once-again companion William are all here. The primary protagonist of the novel is Bob Burgess, a semi-retired lawyer who moved from New York City to Crosby when he met and married Margaret, a minister serving a parish in Crosby.
Strout’s particular gift is her ability to convey deep emotions, including darker ones, frankly and with an economy of words and images. She operates not with lyrical depictions of setting or place, but with streamlined, almost Hemingway-esque sentences and straightforward telling of interactions between her characters. he includes sparse details that tell a great deal—the unusual color of Lucy Barton’s dress or shoes that shock the eye of Olive Kitteridege, the colors and brushstrokes of the gifted paintings of pregnant women done by recluse Matt, and the ever-changing skies and river tones which are the backdrop of Bob and Lucy’s walks. Nonetheless, this is not a novel primarily about place; it is about the gift of listening as a salve to loneliness. Stout’s characters in this novel are all “mature,” aging adults, past mid-life, at or nearing retirement, children grown and flown, and confronting the shifted dynamics of the later third of life. There is some dislocation, dissatisfaction, depression and even death. There is also deep friendship, extraordinary kindness and compassion and rediscovery. There is infatuation and dalliance with infidelity, navigation of childhood resentments byadult children and new-found friendships that emerge late in life.
Bob Burgess moves through his life in a bit of a fog, and with a cloud hanging over him. He lived most of his life believing that as a child he had accidentally killed his father in a car accident when he was four years old. He and his siblings were in the car, the gear shift dislodged, the car rolled back and killed his father. Much later in life, Jim’s older brother confessed that it was he who had played with the gear shift and was responsible for the accident, but Bob had lived his life bearing the weight of the tragedy and the relief of Jim’s disclosure is minimal. Bob finds friendship in Lucy Barton, an author who has relocated to Crosby, Maine from New York. The two enjoy weekly walks along the river. Drama arrives in Crosby when a cranky older woman goes missing and turns up dead. Her eccentric son, Matt, who lived with her, becomes the prime suspect. Bob takes on Matt’s case, and in defending him, also befriends the loner. There is a mildly surprising twist to the case, though it is not central to the novel.
Bob observes from afar as his sister-in-law, Helen, whom he cared deeply for, battles cancer in New York. Helen’s decline brings Bob closer to his brother, Jim. Whether it is Matt’s trial, Helen’s illness or his own rocky relationship with Margaret, Bob’s mood drops and he finds solace in his long weekly walks and deep conversations with Lucy Barton. The two seem to understand one another intuitively, and their friendship deepens to mutual infatuation in part because each is deeply empathetic and a gifted, devoted listener and in part because their respective marriage/significant relationships are unsatisfying. Their friendship, and their dedication to slow and event-free weekly walks reminds us of the many distractions and hurried lives that rob of this quality and of our ability to gift listening to those whom we care most deeply about.
Set among mid-lifers and seniors, Tell Me Everything is a timely reminder of the emptiness of a too-harried, too distracted life. Social media, cell phones, and limitless television streaming options creep into our daily existence and rob us of the simpler, slower treasure of personal interface, of deep conversations, of slow walks with a friend. The novel taps the epidemic of isolation and loneliness we experienced during Covid, which was exacerbated through remote work and our dependence on devices and the expense of personal connection. Tell Me Everything is a meaningful reminder to slow down, to pay attention to those around us and to re-cultivate the art of conversation and the gift of deep listening.
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