Publication Date: September 10, 2024
From Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout comes a hopeful, healing novel about new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world.
With her “extraordinary capacity for radical empathy” (The Boston Globe), remarkable insight into the human condition, and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more—as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?”
It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known—“unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them—reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.
Brimming with empathy and pathos, Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which we our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.”
Elizabeth Strout writes as if she hovers above the physical world, observing, sensing, and connecting what may seem unlinked, but when lived out in the lives of individuals, they are the stories of ordinary people. Tell Me Everything is a deceptively quiet book that may shine a new light on the purpose of your own life and bring an awareness of the subtleties of others’ struggles and accomplishments that make the human experience so complex.
Elizabeth Strout has written several novels, including Olive Kitteridge, which won a Pulitzer Prize. That central character reappears in Tell Me Everything, as do other characters from her previous books.
Olive is now in her nineties, living in a retirement community, and thinking of the people she knows in Crosby, Maine. Stories of Crosby residents fill her memories, and she would like to share them, feeling connected in a way to the town she was once among in its daily events. However, it is the local semi-retired lawyer, Bob Burgess, who will take center stage in this novel. He and his wife Margaret live in the middle of town, and their outreach affects many. Bob has a kind heart but doesn’t think his life is worth much. His days are filled with routine and supporting those around him.
Then, the town of Crosby is buzzing with the news that long-time resident Gloria Beach has been murdered. Bob is approached to defend Gloria’s adult son. But Bob’s beneficence will go well beyond taking on a case of a misunderstood recluse.
His respite is in his walks with local author Lucy. As everyone pulls from Bob’s emotional source, Lucy adds to it. She understands Bob, sees him, allows him to unburden his mind, and in doing so, has his life witnessed.
Olive boldly asks Lucy to pay her a visit in the nursing home. She thinks that maybe she could tell her stories to Lucy who might use them to write a new book. But Lucy and Olive quickly come to realize that it is in the telling of these unremarkable stories aloud that brings a validation to the lives lived. In the telling, they recognize the burdens that were carried and how each life had a purpose.
Elizabeth Strout brings a raw focus to her characters in Tell Me Everything, leading the reader to accept each as a point of reference to the relevance of his or her own life.
Elizabeth Strout is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Lucy by the Sea; Oh William!, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Olive, Again; Anything Is Possible, winner of the Story Prize; My Name Is Lucy Barton; The Burgess Boys; Olive Kitteridge, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Abide with Me; and Amy and Isabelle, winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in London. She lives in Maine.
