By Elizabeth Strout – Random House, 2024
There are some authors whose work you can’t help but return to, and Elizabeth Strout is one of them. Tell Me Everything is the fifth in a series set in Crosby, ME, home to characters we know and love. Former teacher Olive Kitteridge invites Lucy Barton, an acclaimed writer living in Crosby since COVID, to flesh out a potential storyline in which more of the town’s history is revealed. Retired attorney Bob Burgess takes on the murder case of a young man accused of killing his mother. Bob has a sense of an unfinished life, which he talks about on his regular walks with Lucy—he struggles with his unspoken love for Lucy and laments the challenges of marriage in later life. Notably aloof and snarky, Olive shows a softer side in this novel, impressing old acquaintances who judged her harshly—and she may hold the key to solving the murder.
What makes this novel remarkable is how we see the townspeople aging, how people have changed and how they’ve stayed the same. Ultimately, Tell Me Everything is about the search for meaning and connection, and the things people choose to conceal or reveal about themselves.
