Strout’s back to brilliant form in ‘Anything Is Possible’
Everyday lives in a small town receive a generous hearing
When Elizabeth Strout is on her game, is there anybody better?
Her latest, Anything Is Possible, is Strout’s best book since Olive Kitteridge, her dazzling, 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of stories (and later HBO miniseries) about a curmudgeonly Mainer. Anything Is Possible (Random House, 254 pp., out of four) shares much of Olive’s DNA: Here Strout gives us nine linked stories that paint an astonishingly empathetic portrait of the heartland and its people. Trump country.
The folks in small-town Amgash, Ill., connected by big heartaches and small triumphs, tumble in and out of each other’s lives in these masterful, moving tales. The ostensible “link” is Lucy Barton, the title character from Strout’s bleak 2016 novella My Name Is Lucy
Barton. Lucy, a successful writer in New York, has fled Illinois, haunted by memories of an ugly, impoverished childhood where she and her siblings were considered “trash” and “viciously scorned by the other kids.”
Now Lucy’s latest book, a memoir, is in the local bookstore; she hasn’t been home in 17 years, but in the story Sister, she decides to finally return to see her brother and sister. Her ensuing panic attack says it all.
The enigmatic Lucy is really a shadow here (much as she was in the disappointing My Name Is
Lucy Barton), and it’s other characters who grab you by the throat. A Vietnam vet who doesn’t love his wife. A B&B owner who gives deserved comeuppance to a snotty, self-absorbed guest. An overweight high school guidance counselor who recognizes her own cruelty to an obnoxious student (Lucy’s niece), and makes amends.
Lucy’s brother, Pete, will absolutely break your heart. He’s a damaged “boy-man” who harbors a deep misunderstanding about his pathetic father, one that’s put to rights in The Sign by the kindly, elderly, retired school janitor who still checks in on Pete and remembers poor Lucy from her school days. Watch for Pete to take up a sledgehammer in a brilliant twist (no, not to Mr. Guptill). Wow.
Several of the sharpest, most sensitive tales in Anything Is Possible depict the delicate dance between aging mothers and their grown daughters. Mississippi Mary is an exemplar, a lovely, perfectly crafted symphony that shifts from anger to acceptance to sweet reconciliation.
Family secrets — which Strout slyly reveals — abound in Anything Is Possible. Despite moments of darkness, this is a generous, wry book about everyday lives, and Strout crawls so far inside her characters you feel you inhabit them. It celebrates love (always imperfect) and forgiveness, acknowledges the burdens and gifts of feeling genuine emotion (small, illuminating moments of connection), and suggests judgment where judgment is due. This is a book that earns its title. Try reading it without tears or wonder.