Tell Me Everything: Elizabeth Strout is Not a Unitarian. But could be.

I’ve told so many people recently to read Elizabeth Strout’s Tell Me Everything and I’m desperately anxious that other people won’t love it as much as I did, so if you hated it, or even felt kind of ambivalent about it, just let’s pretend neither of us read it and never talk about it together.

In the universe of Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton this one is a close look at Bob Burgess who cannot see himself clearly. A book about Bob, but a book about how every life – those we know and more those we don’t – has a story (and in that story, matters). And how we try to figure out what a life means (in one heartbreaking and also sideways funny scene Lucy asks Bob exactly that – what does it mean) even when this is a question as pointless as it is pressing.

How Bob saves and doesn’t save – and eats the sins – of all those around him. How he sacrifices what he barely realizes he wants in aid of those around him, knowing, somehow the right thing to do quickly and with exhaustion.

The writing, as always, is this hard-to-explain balance of direct – telling you exactly what a character is thinking, or meaning, or what a thematic moment is “about” – and the evocative – letting a gesture carry the weight of all the possible explanations: Lucy wears odd socks. LUCY WEARS ODD SOCKS.

Take Bob’s wife, Margaret, the Unitarian minister, who only in nearly losing her job realizes the humility with which she must approach the pulpit. And in nearly losing Bob realizes what he needs of her as partner. I loved Margaret for her fullness (all of the characters in these books are full) and the scene that describes her nightgown – which may be the same scene or one adjacent where Bob speculates she is a narcissist – that does this brilliant work of both telling us exactly what is happening and lets it unfold in the scene itself.

(So many Unitarian threads beyond Margaret (meaning in community; community to support individual journey; life is meaningful for the impact we have on others; etc etc and on) I just googled whether Strout is a Unitarian: she is not.)

I’m not sure whether to tell you to start with this one if you’ve not read Strout before, but maybe it doesn’t matter – grab any one of the books and enjoy a universe where the small moments are worthy and your story is, too.