Anything is Possible (2017) is another book I picked up on President Obama’s recommendation. I remember reading Olive Kittredge (2008) many years ago–it must have been right after it was published. At the time I was impressed by the writing, but the details are fuzzy. Anything is Possible is similar in construction: a novel composed of interconnected short stories. However, these stories take place in a small, Midwestern farming community instead of a small town in Maine. Lucy Barton is the primary connection in these short stories. Everyone in the […]
He opened his eyes, and yes, there it was, the perfect knowledge: Anything was possible for anyone.”
Elizabeth Strout takes her background characters from My Name is Lucy Barton and brings them to the forefront in these interconnected short stories. You don’t need to have read Lucy Barton to understand and enjoy Anything is Possible but I do think it will help flesh out some of these essays. Lucy, who doesn’t narrate any of these stories, left her small town and eventually became a writer in New York. Several of these stories connect back to Lucy who has a memoir published in […]
So Much Small-Town Drama
If you have ever lived in a small town, where everyone knows everyone and everyone knows everyone’s darkest secrets, then Amgash, Illinois and its cast of characters will seem really familiar to you. In a series of short stories, Elizabeth Strout moves from one character to another — most of the time the people in the tales being told are linked by blood or friendship, and so over the course of about a year, the lives of Strout’s characters weave together, with Strout checking back […]
“Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me.”
Elizabeth Strout’s Anything is Possible is on the short list of a Goodreads Choice Award but it had a waitlist at my library so I picked up My Name is Lucy Barton instead and was pleasantly surprised. “My mother told me in the hospital that day that I was not like my brother and sister: “Look at your life right now. You just went ahead and…did it.” Perhaps she meant that I was already ruthless. Perhaps she meant that, but I don’t know what my […]