Elizabeth Strout: Tell Me Everything

From the pen that brought Olive Kitteridge into the world comes a new novel about new friendships and old loves. Elizabeth Strout introduces her latest tale.

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 ex-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 about people they have known – ‘unrecorded lives,’ as Olive calls them – reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.

Brimming with empathy and pathos, Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat.

Elizabeth Strout is the Pulitzer prize-winning author of My Name is Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Oh, William! and Lucy by the Sea. She has been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the International Dublin Literary Award, the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize.