It's autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her husband William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. Together, they spend afternoons in Olive's apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known—'unrecorded lives, ' Olive calls them—reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.
Brings together Strout’s most indelible characters in a rich tapestry, intricately wrought yet effortlessly realized, both suspenseful and meditative ... An achingly moving and exhilarating novel that brings people together across lines of age, gender, profession, political affiliation.
Will feel like old home week to the more faithful of Ms. Strout’s readers ... Compassionate if rather gimmicky ... Encompasses a year—Ms. Strout’s Shaker-spare evocation of the changing seasons is lovely. But sometimes, it feels like an awfully long year. There is so much going on, so many sagas; some, particularly those involving Jim Burgess’s family, tilt toward soap opera. Some verge on the incomprehensible.
Tender ... Strout’s best work exhibits some of this same duality, her prose style at once familiar and beguilingly unpredictable. In Tell Me Everything, the former quality often outweighs the latter; the 'Stroutness' of the writing can feel oddly emphatic ... These devices feel overused and somewhat threadbare here; over time they have lost the power to evoke the strong feeling they did in earlier books. Still, Tell Me Everything offers readers an abundance of the searing and plain-spoken insights for which Strout is beloved ... Strout is a master at conjuring emotion with a simple palette, at bringing a reader to tears without feeling the least bit manipulated.
