Strout reveals that ‘Anything Is Possible’
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 eeee four) shares 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, disappointing 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.”
The enigmatic Lucy is really a shadow here, and it’s other characters who grab you by the throat.
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, but suggests judgment where judgment is due. This is a book that earns its title. Try reading it without tears, or wonder.