Author: Elizabeth Strout
Year published: 2024
Category: Adult fiction
Pages: 352 pages
Rating: 4 out of 5
Location: (my 2025 Google Reading map): USA (ME, NY)
Summary: With her remarkable insight into the human condition and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more—as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?”
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. They spend afternoons together 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.
Review: I read the original Olive Kittridge and liked it, but it wasn't a favorite so I haven't read the follow up or the Lucy Barton series. However, everyone raves about this book, so I decided to give it a go.
Elizabeth Strout is really good at character studies. I like that we get to know the fairly large cast of characters in detail, understand their relationships, their histories, and why they behave the way they do. Even the murder case that Bob has taken on feels almost like a character study rather than a plot.
Olive is such an odd woman, but I liked her better in this novel. She has softened, and the stories she told were captivating. Her budding friendship with Lucy is nice to see; I felt like they both needed each other. Bob is so likable, and he connects Lucy, Helen, Jim, Pam, Margaret, and Susan.
There isn't quite enough plot for me in this novel to rate it 4.5 or 5/5. I can see that the Lucy Barton series by Strout is one that readers would enjoy as they get to know more and more about all of these characters.
Challenges for which this counts:
- Alphabet (Author)--S
- Literary Escapes--Maine
- Mount TBR
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