Tag: Elizabeth Strout

“I always wanted to tell someone.”

A review of “Tell Me Everything” in 100 words by Catherine Stover

Like Pride and Prejudice, this book opens with a lie. It says, “This is the story of Bob Burgess.” The truth is that it’s the story of Bob, Lucy, Olive, Margaret, William, Jim, and Pam  and the stories … Read More

“Mom, I don’t know who to trust!”

Elizabeth Strout’s new novel — a Christmas gift of the first order – is her most enigmatic. Reviewers have drawn wildly different conclusions about the book’s message. For me, the book explores what happens when you don’t know who you can trust. Lucy, the protagonist, finds that she can’t even … Read More

“I have thought about this a lot, and I would like to know – I really would like to – when does a person actually choose anything?”

In an interview, Elizabeth Strout said that she once met an advisor in the Obama administration who said that he was there to help make choices. It turned out, however, that most often the best course of action was so obvious that that they really didn’t have to debate … Read More

“Silence surrounded her as she waited.”

In Olive, Again there is a lot of waiting and a lot of people dying. And yet, there is an underlying sense of urgency as the main characters struggle to figure things out, which is difficult work because it’s clear that they have more regrets than triumphs.  This is Elizabeth … Read More

Four Favorite Books from 2017

I’ve already written about the best books of 2017 for teachers, and so today I will focus on the other books that I’ve read this year. My “favorite” books are the ones that I am most likely to read again. Here they are:

1. Elizabeth Strout: Anything Is Possible… Read More

“The Hopper painting hung on the wall with an indifference so vast it began to feel personal, as though it had been painted for this moment”

The passage continues: “Your troubles are huge and meaningless, it seemed to say, there is only the sun on the side of the house.”  The troubles of the people in this illuminating book are vast indeed: no novelist, including Charles Dickens, reveals more clearly the grim scars of poverty and … Read More

Five Best Novels of 2016

The five novels that rose to the top of my 2016 list are:

The best word to describe Elizabeth Strout’s My Name is Lucy Barton is exquisite. What I love about Strout is her ability to dive right in to the heat of the moment without engaging in melodrama or … Read More

“Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me.”

Strout2 Lucy BartonIn an interview, novelist Elizabeth Strout said that she sees writing as a way “to help people,” that her job was to try “to open somebody’s eyes just a little bit for one minute.” Is there a greater challenge that writers can give themselves? And how can fiction writers … Read More