MixedThe New RepublicThis is a very long book that is very ample on seemingly insignificant matters and oddly reticent on a few big ones ... Future biographers of Atwood will have much material to feast on in Book of Lives, as will the sort of congregants for whom no incident in her everyday life is unimportant ... If Book of Lives does not end up among the lasting Atwoods, I suspect the reason will be so many words, and so quickly—or, rather, her not taking the time to make it shorter.
Elizabeth Strout
PanThe New RepublicThough Strout peers into these lives with warmth and compassion...she has tended to do so without sentimentality ... And yet her recent novels, including the latest, are not as adept at treading that line ... The problem with Tell Me Everything is that everyone is innocent, or at least absolved ... What happened to Strout? The writing does not feel lazy or complacent. Nor, despite an almost comical amount of hemming and hawing in the dialogue, would I exactly call it timid ...
