Olivia Cole

Unrecorded lives: Tell Me Everything, by Elizabeth Strout, reviewed

The pandemic’s aftershocks are still felt in Crosby, as Strout’s best-loved characters, Olive, Lucy, Jim and Bob, reminisce about people they have known, imbuing their lives with meaning

Elizabeth Strout. [Getty Images] 
issue 21 September 2024

There was a time when Elizabeth Strout’s fans had to wait a few years for the next book; but Tell Me Everything follows fast on her two previous novels – part of what she has termed a ‘marathon’ of writing in her sixties. It has been an extraordinary creative flowering: a diverting pleasure for admirers of her psychological perceptiveness and her ability to transport us instantly to Crosby, her fictional town in contemporary Maine.

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