Tell Me Everything, by
Elizabeth Strout.
Elizabeth
Strout’s beloved characters are all lined-up here, again ready to allow us into
their lives, feelings and dramas and what a privilege it is to meet them
again: Olive Kitteridge, former maths
teacher in Crosby, Maine where she has lived her entire prickly, outspoken life
(she is now 90); Lucy Barton, now a
respected novelist who has moved with her ex-husband William to Crosby during
the Pandemic ‘to see what happens’ – to see, really, if they can be properly
and permanently reconciled after William’s several affairs; and Bob Burgess, a lawyer returned to his
nearby hometown of Shirley Falls with his wife Margaret, a Unitarian
Minister. The scene is set.
Bob
and Lucy are firm friends and go walking by the river each week, rain or
shine. Lucy is privy to the fact that
Bob gave up smoking years ago but at a certain place on their usual path, he
lights up his verboten ciggy, then has to make sure the wind doesn’t blow the
incriminating smoke onto his clothing;
Margaret would be scandalised if she knew of his lapse! And Lucy finds in Bob the perfect listener as
she bounces ideas and opinions off him;
his common-sense logic and practicality is invaluable.
From
the distance of her retirement home Olive watches and shrewdly evaluates the
growing friendship, for Lucy visits her, often with stories of her own to tell,
and it’s possible that this story could have turned out differently if a local
woman that everyone detested went missing, not to be found until months later
submerged in a car at the bottom of a quarry:
her middle-aged reclusive son Matt is the main suspect – he was her
caregiver but was also a weirdo, liked to paint pictures of nude pregnant
women. What a pervert! Until Bob consents to defend him, should the
case go to trial, and all the stories start to float up to the surface, Olive
remembering many of them.
‘Tell
Me Everything’ is exactly that, for unburdening themselves eases many heavy
hearts in this beautiful little book;
every character has something that they never want to think of again,
but are unable to think of anything else.
No-one is exempt from heartache, regardless of how well they
pretend. And I wonder if this is Olive’s
last hurrah – her best and only friend at the retirement home seems to be
sleeping more and more lately. Olive’s
still wide-awake, but for how long? I
cannot imagine one of Ms Strout’s books without her. Rock on, Olive, rock on! FIVE STARS
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