It’s only the new Elizabeth Strout

Lucy, Bob and Olive, too.

People. She’s back. And so is Lucy Barton. And William. And gentle, good-and-pure-as-an-apple Bob Burgess. And Olive Kitteridge.

Yes, Strout has brought them together in the Stroutaverse.

If your mind isn’t boggling with delight, then you might wish to stop reading. There have been critics who complain that this is too whimsical. Too much Strout. Or too Strout-ish - with her characteristic “oh’s”. To which I say: is there such a thing as too much Strout? Give me excess of her. The phrase ‘deceptively simple’ was made for her - her apparently artless sentences contain multitudes. Strout makes me sit back and marvel. She thinks that “all ordinary people are extraordinary”. In the words of Lucy: “People are mysteries, We are all such mysteries.”

I loved this book so much, I wanted to keep it to myself for a little while - just me and it. I held it in my hand and marvelled. I carried my thoughts around with me, let them swirl gently like flotsam in my mind, looking at strangers in a new way and pondering how there are “all these unrecorded lives” and how “people just live them”.

Lucy - you may recall - decamped to small-town coastal Maine during the pandemic, moving in with her ex-husband, William. Lucy and Bob take regular walks. “Tell me everything. Tell me every single thing,” she tells him, giving both the novel its title and Bob something irresistible: a friend who listens and understands like no other.