Human frailty and tender hope in a small town

Tell Me Everything

Elizabeth Strout
Random House, 2024.

A manager I worked for at a not-for-profit agency once explained to me why she chose to work there. “I want to make a difference,” she said. She had no children, and here was one way she could leave her stamp on the world.

I suspect that everyone longs to make a positive difference in the world. All parents leave indelible stamps on their children (not always positive ones). Probably also teachers. (I confess to being quite aglow after a student I taught English to 40 years ago told me he “never really got into Shakespeare” but he enjoyed Romeo and Juliet).

The quiet lives most of us lead

But let’s face it: most of us live pretty unremarkable lives. Many of us do not make the headlines, receive awards or get photographed when recognized shopping at Safeway.

Elizabeth Strout’s Tell Me Everything is a novel about a very ordinary, unremarkable and unassuming man: a 65-year-old named Bob (which just happens to be the name of my own husband of 50 years). In the novel’s opening lines, Elizabeth Strout writes that Bob Burgess “has a big heart, but he does not know that about himself. . . and he would never believe he had anything worthy in his life to document. But he does; we all do.”

This novel is the latest in Strout’s series about personalities in the small town of Shirley Falls, Maine. Some of the previous characters return: Olive Kitteridge (of Olive Kitteridge and Olive, Again) shows up (at age 90, and cranky) and the author who now made it big, Lucy Barton (Lucy by the Sea, My Name is Lucy Barton). And Bob Burgess, still plagued by guilt over an unfortunate incident in younger days described in a previous book.

Tell Me Everything takes place in the small sleepy town of Crosby, Maine, sporting porches cluttered with old tires. We get a peek into the windows to see various families in their daily routines before the curtains are drawn (and sometimes what happens beyond them). The book is set at the tail end of the isolation of the pandemic, with the background of Zoom meetings, vaccinations, booster shots and the wearing of masks.

Companionship, sermons and soulmates

Bob is married to a minister (“Olive did not like ministers”), and he finds that his wife’s sermons lack authenticity. In another deep sense, Lucy is his truest companion – a kind of soulmate, as some may say. He regularly meets her on walks along the river and at a park bench to talk about life, or not to talk at all. Tender times.

Olive invites Lucy, now a well-known author, to her place to share stories that she thinks are worth re-telling. At first, Olive is actually quite rude (she asks why she is wearing those “horrible boots!”) But eventually a friendship develops. Strout has said that her desire through story is to weave interior lives within the context of a larger external world. Tell Me Everything illustrates these various levels of friendship.

The stories within stories come together through the attentive character of Bob. When a woman’s body is found floating in the water of the local quarry, Bob’s skills as a semi-retired lawyer help to reveal various secrets and tragedies of the little town. His trusted persona eventually solves the tragedy while showing the universal frailties of being human, of being vulnerable and of broken people. Bob is the connection to everyone’s desire to be accepted, despite lies, deceptions and affairs.

Bob does not perform deeds of heroism. He is just there. Lucy calls him a “sin eater” – someone who by listening lets others voice and shed their shame – “eating their sin.”Accepting them. A trusted listener. But one day he realizes that he needs help and gets it from his brother – not at all one with the credentials to “eat sin” and linked to that unfortunate incident in Bob’s past. Strout’s storytelling highlights that most people, at some point, realize how broken they are – even Bob. Broken, but not necessarily lost.

Moments of grace

Moments of grace for the characters come through their connections with each other. Lucy captures the gift of connection best at the end of the book, when she is reflecting on the story of a college student connecting with a boyfriend’s elderly relative:

“[The college student] remembered standing in the bedroom with [her boyfriend’s great aunt] this tiny old woman who was frightened and had terrible breath and realizing: I love her the same way that I love my boyfriend! She didn’t want to go to bed with this old woman, but the love she felt for her was distinctly related, of the same cloth. And I’ve always remembered that. Because I understood it. Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love. If it is love, then it is love.”

Reading this book is like very slowly sipping your favourite sherry. If you enjoy the novels of Kent Haruf and Marilynne Robinson or delight in the stories by Garrison Keillor or Canada’s own (gone too soon – sigh) Stuart McLean, you will love this Elizabeth Strout novel. It’s a gentle walk through a small community that takes us to a place of understanding human frailty in all its brokenness, and yet one that is touched by grace and acceptance. For many readers, it can be a welcome reprieve when news flashes and other challenges can make life seem less than hopeful.