How wonderful to be back with the wonderful characters created by Elizabeth Strout. Reading one of her novels is like sitting down and having a long catch up with a treasured friend.

I adored how this novel brought Lucy, William, Bob and Olive together, Strout can make you think about the biggest questions in life through seemingly mundane conversations. The murder investigation and the will they, won't they between Lucy and Bob increased the opportunities to do this.

An excellent addition to the Lucy and Olive series of books. I hope she never stops writing them!

What a treat to have a new Elizabeth Strout, and Tell Me Everything doesn't disappoint. Going back to Shirley Falls, and being among the recurring characters of Strout's novels - Olive Kitteridge, Lucy Barton, Bob Burgess - is like being reunited with old friends.
In Tell Me Everything Strout considers the nature of love: romantic, platonic, familial, and the meaning of life.
Lucy Barton, back with ex husband William, has a touching friendship with the wonderful Bob Burgess. Is it turning into something deeper? Meanwhile Bob, a retired lawyer, has taken on the case of a man accused of killing his mother. Olive Kitteridge, now 90, has a deep friendship with a woman in her nursing home, who may be moving to live with her daughter.
Olive is irascible as ever as she forensically examines author Lucy on her first visit. She and Lucy start meeting occasionally to describe unrecorded lives. Their examples are very rich and varied, certainly better than anything I and my 91 year old mother could muster!
The ending was absolutely perfect with all the loose ends neatly tied.
As always Strout conveys the emotions, the sighs, the unspoken word, with poignancy and empathy. I dreaded seeing the last page. I wanted to stay in Shirley Falls.

This is my 400th Netgalley review and I couldn't think of any other author who I would like to have written my 400th book than Elizabeth Strout.

Add to it, the fact that this is an Olive Kitteridge/Lucy Barton crossover and what else could a reader possibly ask for. What Strout can do better than any other author is make the ordinary, extraordinary. Make the normal, stand out. Make the mundane, exciting.

Honestly one of my favourite authors and a joy to read.

Thanks to Netgalley and Viking for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Elizabeth Strout does it again! A heartfelt and thematically driven story, I fell in love with this book. Great read.

Utterly Fabulous! Shed a few tears just like Lucy at the end. This book can be read as a standalone novel since Elizabeth Strout as always deftly and cleverly weaves in enough of the characters backstories so that not having read all her Amgash and Olive Kitteridge/Crosby set books isn't an issue but doesn't put off serial readers with too much retreading of information. This book picks up in the here and now after Lucy by the Sea( which followed Lucy Barton during Lockdown). This time Bob Burgess takes centre stage as his walk and talk meetings with Lucy Barton deepen their friendship. We also get to see what is happening in the life of Jim Sturgess ( Bob's brother) who is a big shot New York lawyer, how Margaret, Bob's second and current wife is faring and also what has been happening to Pam, Bob's first wife. Bob, a mostly retired lawyer, also takes on a harrowing murder case. Best of all, Lucy starts to visit Olive Kitteridge! and tell each other stories of "unrecorded lives." I devoured this book. Elizabeth Strout is a genius, so insightful on the human condition. Wonderful.

Tell me Everything by Elizabeth Strout reunites us with Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge and yes, for the first time, our favourite characters actually meet in person!

We’re back in Crosby, Maine, where Lucy moved during the pandemic in Strout’s last novel, Lucy by the Sea. Lucy is now reunited with her ex-husband William and takes regular walks with Bob Burgess, a kind-hearted pillar of the community with whom Lucy discusses life, the vagaries of people and the complexities of what she calls ‘unrecorded lives’. Lucy also regularly meets with Olive in her retirement village room and again talks about people they’ve known and the calamities that have befallen them.

Another storyline concerns the Beach family - the town’s oddball outcasts made up of an elderly mother who was hated when she was a school dinner lady and her son Matt, a middle-aged ‘weirdo’ who lives with her. She has two other children, both of whom moved elsewhere decades ago. The mum disappears (I won’t say more due to spoilers) but Matt needs the legal help of Bob when he is suspected of involvement.

I am a huge fan of Strout’s writing. I don’t think there’s a better novelist with the use of dialogue. Through telling the stories of quite ordinary, in some ways simple people, she tells a very profound story about love, connection and hope. Can’t recommend highly enough.

Thanks NetGalley for my review copy of this brilliant novel.

I loved Olive Kitteridge and I really enjoyed reading about Lucy Barton so to have these two characters meet was supposed to be a meeting of the minds but often I found this novel a little stilted and I realised I actually enjoyed them both individually and seeing things from their POV.

I’m not quite sure the third person view works in this novel and while it was interesting and having a mystery in the middle was good I thought it was trying to be all things to all people.

I think fans of Elizabeth Strout’s writing will be rewarded with the sharp, clear wit and observations they’re used to but I’m not convinced the meeting of all the characters quite worked for me.

Synopsis -TELL ME EVERYTHING is a hopeful, healing novel about new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world. 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. Stories about people they have known – “unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them – reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.

My thoughts —- oh how I adore Elizabeth Strout’s writing and was thrilled to read her new offering to the book world! Lucy Barton is still living with William but the book centres on Lucy’s walks with Bob , her talks with Olive Kitteridge, and Bobs support of Matt after his mother was found dead. Oh how lovely to be in Crosby Maine with these characters there is no plot it’s all about ordinary life of these wonderful people. Connections that we make through our lifetime and the kindness, love ,wisdom and experiences of them. This book is a warm hug ! I can’t wait for you all to read it!!

How wonderful to return to Maine and get reaquainted with Elizabeth Strout’s beloved characters, Bob Burgess, Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge, with a few cameo appearances by others from earlier books. Lucy has now left New York and, since the pandemic, is back with first husband William, close friends with Bob and gets to know Olive as they tell each other stories from their lives. Several big life changes occur, but at the heart of the novel are snapshots of everyday life and experiences of the people in the community and those they care about, their relationships and their history, traumas and triumphs. As Bob and Lucy realise, everyone is broken to some extent, everyone is lonely, but what is most important in life is love, in all its forms. As always, Strout writes with compassion and empathy, her characters come alive from the page and she really makes you think about your own life. William once said that he married Lucy because she feels joy, despite her troubled childhood, and the joy of the everyday as well as sometimes the sorrow is what really shines out of this book. Anyone who hasn’t read the earlier books can still enjoy this one, but will be missing out on some of the layers that have been built up over several volumes, and should seek out the earlier ones immediately. I envy anyone who still has the pleasure of that discovery to come.

This latest by Elizabeth Strout does not disappoint! Bringing together the characters who we have net throughout her writing into a poignant and moving story of love, friendship, ageing, the ever shifting nature of long term relationships in a story about stories. The stories we tell about others, to others and to ourselves. Excellent!

A beautiful last chapter to Strout’s characters. Readers will definitely love the way she manages to intertwine the lives of her main characters.

A new book from Elizabeth Strout is always such a treat and a comfort. She writes so well about people’s flaws and mistakes and loneliness and connections.

This is Elizabeth Strout’s tenth book (all of which take place in the same fictional world) after:
Her 1998 debut “Amy and Isabelle”;
Her second novel “Abide With Me” (2006);
Her Pulitzer Prize winning interlinked short-story collection “Oliver Kitteridge” (2008) with stories centred around the eponymous curmudgeonly (retired) maths teacher, later followed up with “Olive, Again” (2019);
“The Burgess Boys” (2013);
Her Booker longlisted “My Name is Lucy Barton” (2016) which introduced the eponymous successful but insecure novelist from an extremely hard and poor upbringing which was then followed up in the “Amgash” series by the interlinked short stories “Anything Is Possible” (2017), her Booker shortlsted novel “Oh William” (2021) about Lucy’s first husband, and then her COVID novel “Lucy By The Sea”.

That later novel had as its heart William insisting Lucy flees New York in the early stages of the pandemic and move with him to Maine, where Lucy strikes up a close friendship with the retired Bob Burgess (from “The Burgess Boys) – but Katherine (from “Abide With Me”), Isabelle (from “Any and Isabelle) and Olive Kitteridge all make appearances, the latter two more of a cameo appearance as both are living in a care home where Charlene – who Lucy meets when both volunteer at a food bank and befriends across the increasing US political divide – cleans.

This novel is a very direct chronological and character follow up “Lucy By The Sea” but: with the wider Burgess family playing a major role; the friendship between Bob and Lucy being completely central to the novel; a murder investigation providing the plot scaffolding (Bob coming out of retirement to defend an eccentric man suspected of killing the elderly mother he has nursed much of his life) and most delightfully a burgeoning friendship between Strout’s two most legendary characters one which starts around sharing their stories of the often deeply sad and affecting unrecorded lives (“Lucy Barton had used that phrase when she first met Olive and heard Olive ’s story about her mother: unrecorded lives, she had said. And Olive thought about this. Everywhere in the world people led their lives unrecorded, and this struck her now. She summoned Lucy Barton again.”) they encountered over their long lives – but which ultimately and movingly causes them both to re-examine some of their closest relationships (Lucy with Bob, Olive with Isabelle) and to ultimately agree in a moving conclusion that “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love”

It is a must read for any fans of either Olive Kitteridge or Lucy Barton – and I know some fall into one camp or the other and simply essential for those who like both (I smiled when Charlene reflects that she “liked being with Lucy … Almost as much as she liked being with Olive Kitteridge”). For those who are unfamiliar with Strout’s work I would consider this book as a target rather than a beginning and read (as a minimum) “Olive Again” (for me the best of the Olive collections) and then back to back “My Name is Lucy Barton”, “Oh William” and “Lucy By The Sea” before this book.

Like so much of Strout’s writing, this is a beautiful, wise and often deeply affecting examination of human lives, of how childhood incidents can cause insecurities and shape character and behaviour for the rest of life, of ageing and how it can give a different perspective of parenting and parents, of the impossibility of really knowing another person and here in particular of what love means.