Unrecorded lives: ‘Tell Me Everything’ by Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth Strout is a genius at the small moments. The lift of an arm, the turn of a head, a hand on a shoulder. A fallen blossom. Slushy snow on a sidewalk, wet shoes. A blush, a smile. Speaking, listening, being truly heard.
The small moments that build to make a friendship, a relationship, a marriage, a family. A life.
Tell Me Everything features characters from previous Strout novels such as Olive Ketteridge, Oh William! Lucy By the Sea. It is now post-Covid (or not quite, because Covid doesn’t seem to really go away, does it?) and Lucy and William have remained in their Maine house near the sea. Lucy’s friendship with local lawyer Bob Burgess has developed and deepened; they take regular long walks together where they talk – and really listen – to each other.
And who – who who who in this whole entire world – does not want to be heard?
Tell Me Everything p198Meanwhile Bob has taken on the defence of a local man accused of the murder of his mother. It’s a complicated case with many layers of hurt and history to uncover and understand.
Around Bob and Lucy, are other layers of hurt and misunderstanding as various members of their families struggle with illness, accidents, separation, grief and loss.
How each person deals with these inevitable setbacks are what makes up this novel’s dramatic sweep. Nothing out of the ordinary: they are the kinds of stumbling blocks to be found on the paths of most of us at some point or another, unless we blessed with a totally charmed life.
Another thread throughout are the visits Lucy pays to ninety year old Olive Kitteridge, during which they tell each other stories about people they have known – ‘unrecorded lives’. Some of the stories are almost unbearably painful, others shocking, a few mundane. But in their telling, the lives described are given meaning. And is that not what most of us seek in our lives – a meaning to the living of them?
So, in one sense Tell Me Everything is a novel where nothing in particular happens. In another, it’s a book where a great deal is happening a great deal of the time.
Tell Me Everything is a beautiful, gentle, heartfelt book. If you haven’t read the earlier books by this author, I would recommend you at least read Lucy by the Sea first, as it will help to place Lucy and William, Bob and Margaret, into the Maine town where this novel mainly takes place. Actually, do yourself a big favour and read all the books in this collection about Lucy, William, Bob and so on. Elizabeth Strout’s writing really is a masterclass in ‘less is more’, in subtlety and in using everyday language and keen observation to great effect.
Tell Me Everything was published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books, in 2024.
The mistakes of youth: ‘Love and Virtue’ by Diana Reid
Are you a good person, or do you just look like one?
The question of what makes a ‘good person’ is explored from the perspectives of first year university students, in this contemporary novel by Sydney based writer, Diana Reid. Readers are invited to consider the hot-potato issues of consent, power and sex – a powder-keg mix if ever there was one.
If you can remember your late teen/early adult years, chances are there are at least a few cringe – or shame – inducing vignettes that you’d rather forget. Michaela is that age, living away from her Canberra home for the first time, and wanting to fit in somewhere. She is not an unquestioning acolyte, but rather interrogates her own experiences to the point of exhaustion. Her friendship with her college room neighbour Eve – wealthy, slender, white, and confidently opinionated – has her feeling out of depth, but she participates in the habitual, conditioned behaviours of young people in this environment – too much drinking, casual sex and drug use.
An occurrence during the university’s ‘O-week’ acts as an underlying pull for the narrative, providing conflict and some mystery. It is a narrative device – but it’s all too recognisable, and one that allows for layers of meaning and intent to ramp up the tension.
The novel shines a spotlight on the awful pressures on young people to conform; women endure harrowing personal humiliations but are expected to ‘take a joke’; young men are groomed for a life of adult privilege and power. Some speak out, others pretend none of it happens.
It’s embarrassing, as a reader, to recall the self absorption of youth and the mistakes that, in retrospect, seem inevitable. At times, the characters’ behaviours reminded me of the hopeless, unhappy role playing of the characters in Sally Rooney’s Normal People.
Similarly, this novel is definitely one for its time: the issues around what constitutes consent in sexual situations is currently being examined in ways not seen before, as are power dynamics and the role of prestigious university colleges in grooming new generations of (potentially) abusive, or at least complicit, men and women.
The prose is beautiful, evocative and very moving at times:
I dived down and counted twelve dolphin kicks, resurfacing close to the moored boat. My body was warmer for the movement, but the morning froze on my face. It was cold enough to remind me, in every tingling pore, that I was, first and foremost, a physical thing. Before thought or feeling or reason, I was a stretch of skin, a bag of flesh, for the ocean to cradle or drown with indifference.
Love and Virtue p160The author states that she wrote this manuscript – her first novel – during the 2020 Covid lockdown in Australia. It was an excellent use of her time and whilst I have no wish for similar lockdowns to happen again, I do look forward to reading more of her work.
Love and Virtue was published in 2021 by Ultimo Press.
Book Review: ‘Between a Wolf and a Dog’ by Georgia Blain
This novel of contemporary fiction was published in the same year in which its author died – far too young. I had not read any of Georgia Blain’s work before getting hold of this book, which I did on a friend’s recommendation. Jennie had said to me that it was a work of great beauty, and she was right.
The novel centres around one family: Ester and her two young daughters, her estranged husband Lawrence, Ester’s sister April (also estranged), and their mother Hilary. Most of the action takes place over one especially rainy Sydney day, although flashbacks help to fill in details, including the reasons for the difficulties in the relationships of Ester and her husband, and Ester and her sister.
It’s a quiet, perceptive novel that had me thinking of the stupid things that we all do and say, especially in our younger years. Actions and words that can hurt and damage, and which often come back to haunt us when we have come to our senses. The members of this family are not bad people: they are flawed in ways many would recognise, trying to come to terms with life’s disappointments and surprises.
I enjoyed this gentle yet thought-provoking novel very much. How sad I was to learn of Blain’s death.
