Elizabeth Strout’s new “Tell Me Everything” may be exactly the book her fans have been waiting for because it unites all three of her most beloved characters.
You’ve heard of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe? Welcome to ‘Olive Kitteridge’ writer Elizabeth Strout’s fictional Maine-iverse.
FICTION: Literary titans unite their powers for the first time, much like the Avengers, in her new book.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
September 3, 2024 at 12:30PM
Olive Kitteridge, Lucy Barton and Bob Burgess have circled each other throughout Strout’s ten books, mostly set in the fictional Maine towns of Shirley Falls and Crosby, but they appear together for the first time in “Tell Me,” which is about the stories we tell each other to survive.
Watching them interact — Bob and Lucy are close friends or maybe more, Olive and Lucy regularly meet to exchange stories — is the literary equivalent of Ironman, Spider-Man and the Hulk teaming up as the Avengers.
And it’s not just those characters. “Tell Me Everything” brings with it confirmation that the Pulitzer Prize winner has been creating an entire, imagined universe since her very first book.
Isabelle Daignault, one of the title characters of that 1998 debut, “Amy and Isabelle,” has popped up in several Strout books and she’s there again in “Tell Me Everything,” wavering about whether to move into a senior living complex. Isabelle also frets about her difficult relationship with daughter Amy, a topic that has occupied her for the 26 years since “Amy and Isabelle” appeared.
Strout’s books aren’t about plot, although there’s more plot than usual in “Tell Me” (Bob, an attorney, represents an artist accused of killing his mother). Her books are really about exploring characters so rich that they reveal more of themselves in book after book after book:
Amy and Isabelle (1998) — Strout’s least-populated novel zeroes in on the titular daughter and mother, whose closeness is challenged by trauma. You’d never know it’s the beginning of the author creating an expansive world, but Shirley Falls is the setting and there are glimpses of characters who will figure in future books. The biggie: Isabelle Daignault becomes close pals with Olive Kitteridge.
Abide With Me (2006) — Strout earned the most negative reviews of her career with her sophomore novel (some think its painful events wrap up too neatly) but it’s a treasure trove of characters Strout continues to write about.
The protagonist is minister Tyler Caskey, mourning the deaths of his young wife and his faith. Strout’s only novel not set in the present (it’s the 1950s), it’s kind of an origins story: We meet, for instance, Tyler’s middle school-aged daughter Katherine (grief-stricken, she announces “I hate God”), who is friends with Bob Burgess, who’ll become one of Strout’s richest characters.
Olive Kitteridge (2008) -- The Pulitzer Prize winner, million copy-seller and basis of an Emmy Award-winning miniseries that starred Frances McDormand, “Olive” solidified Strout as one of our very best fiction writers. It finds her settling on a form most of her books use — not quite short stories, not quite a novel — and, in Olive, establishes one of the most memorable fictional characters of this century. The curmudgeonly former high school teacher lives in the coastal town of Crosby, where neighbors alternately fear and revere her.
The Burgess Boys (2013) — Brothers Jim and Bob Burgess grew up in Shirley Falls but have relocated to New York. With flashbacks to their childhood, “Burgess” is largely about their close-but-wary relationship, formed by a childhood memory they still obsess about: An accident, attributed to Bob, resulted in the death of their father.
We also meet members of Shirley Falls’ growing Somali community, whom Strout returns to often, and a third Burgess sibling, Susan, who plays a small but crucial role in “Tell Me Everything.”
My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016) — The third character of Strout’s triumvirate is Barton, a novelist who calls Maine home (like Strout), is now 68 (like Strout), has achieved remarkable popularity (like Strout) and believes, “People and the lives they lead. That’s the point” (like Strout, who wrote that sentence and whose work embodies that idea). Draw your own conclusions.
Anything Is Possible (2017) — It’s the Strout book that’s least connected to her others. “Anything Is Possible” doesn’t take place mostly in Maine, but in the small Illinois town where Lucy had a difficult childhood. The intertwined stories still feel like Strout, who frequently encourages us not to jump to conclusions about people, and they offer insight into what makes Lucy tick.
Olive, Again (2019) — This is the one where Olive, who says she has become “a tiny bit better as a person” (she’s underestimating herself), meets Isabelle and where we learn she also is friends with Bob Burgess. Nearing 90, Olive reconnects with a student in “Olive Again” and takes a trip with her second husband in stories that find her re-examining choices she has made.
Oh William (2021) — If we were to boil Strout’s work down to one theme, it’s this book’s, “It’s always worth taking a closer look at why people behave the way they do.” Lucy Barton does just that in “Oh William,” coming to surprising conclusions about William, the husband she divorced and with whom she has two children.
Lucy by the Sea (2022) — Strout’s pandemic novel headlines Lucy Barton, but if you were hoping the “in the sea” part of the title meant she’d befriend Olive, you’re out of luck. (She does get tantalizingly close, meeting a woman who is a cleaner at Olive’s retirement community.) Lucy does befriend Bob, though, when she and William (who previously had an affair with Bob’s first wife) impulsively move to Maine to escape New York City’s lockdown. There’s also lots of talk about unrest and the murder of George Floyd in “Lucy by the Sea.”
Tell Me Everything (2024) — That title is Lucy talking, in conversations with both Bob and Olive, who summons Lucy to her apartment, almost as if she’s aware readers have been dying for them to meet. The two tell each other stories they’ve heard (it would not be a surprise if some of these stories, which Lucy says she may write, become a book written by Strout).
Many previous characters recur, including tiny Katherine Caskey from “Abide With Me,” now a grown-up social worker and “good hugger.” Frequent Strout themes — Bob’s minister wife, like Tyler Caskey in “Abide,” might be about to get fired — are here. So is a Lucy Barton quote that describes Strout’s work beautifully, noting that her stories are about “the small connections we make in this world if we are lucky.”
Tell Me Everything
By: Elizabeth Strout.
Publisher: Random House, 352 pages, $30.
St. Paul writer Kao Kalia Yang has won four Minnesota Book Awards and was recognized by the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts.
