With Tell Me Everything, Elizabeth Strout Revisits the Remarkable Literary World She Created in Her Previous Nine Novels
By Elyse Sommer
To start with a hurrah: This latest in Strout's fictional Maine coastal town stories has all the elements that made the novels so emotionally powerful and interesting to read, despite not being all that plot driven. The vivid, stylistically smart writing is more than likely to prompt first-time Strout readers to explore her whole oeuvre. And fans like me will want to re-read at least a few, like the Pulitzer Prize winning Olive Kitteridge and Lucy by the Sea.
As in the past, Tell Me Evertything has the feel of a series but isn't. The book has the two most Stroudian characters -- Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge -- who meet, become friends, and reflect on the meaning of life. The new entry in the Crosby/Shirley Falls saga again plays out within the reality of what's happening in the world. In the case of Tell Me Everything, that's the comeback from the pandemic, which sent Lucy and her ex-husband William to Crosby and safety in Lucy by the Sea.
It's a worrisome world to reflect and act upon for the now 90-year-old Olive, along with Lucy, William and Bob Burgess and his minister wife, Margaret. They, as well as other locals, will be as familiar as old friends to Strout fans.
Fortunately, Strout is at the top of her game. The themes explored are complex and connected with masterful finesse. But ultimately it's the gorgeous and wonderfully visual writing and identifiability of her characters that earns Strout's work its masterwork credentials. Happily, there are still enough readers who value serious writing to make all of her books best sellers. Like other bestselling novels, several have been adapted for on-screen viewing: Olive Kitteridge, as a very watchable mini-series starring Frances McDormand and My Name Is Lucy Barton as a solo showcase for Laura Linney on Broadway. (My review of that play is still in Curtainup's archives.)
Actually, Strout's own reference to the episodes in her novels as "scenes" backs up my feeling that more of her books could be staged as solos, or with two or four of her key characters, using some great projections of the so vividly described background. However, although I'm as much a theater as reading enthusiast, for me the charm and power of Strout's work is on the page.
That said, despite her downplaying of plots, she does manage to include an intriguing subplot in every book. Tell Me Everything is no exception. It includes a local murder case that introduces a terrific new character who re-activates the about-to-close law practice of Bob Burgess.
A final word about Strout's place among fiction's greats. Unlike Tolstoy and Balzac, she lets her stories and characters blossom on her own native soil, as Wllla Cather did long ago with My Antonia. And so Tell Me Everything does everything these great novels do: It's interesting, emotionally engaging and re-readable at different times of the reader's life.
