Recent Reviews
Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout
With great insight, Elizabeth Strout’s newest novel probes the complexity of human relationships. How well can we know another person? How well can we know ourselves? She concludes not well: “We are all such mysteries.” But her novel offers an antidote to this isolation. Listening to other people’s stories connects us to them and causes us to empathize with their plight. Exchanging stories is a gift we can give to ourselves and others.
This character-driven novel takes place in the fictional town of Crosby, Maine. We have met the protagonists in Strout’s prior books: Bob Burgess, Lucy Barton, and Olive Kittridge. The plot revolves around their deepening friendships, the stories they share, and the murder of an elderly woman on the outskirts of town.
Strout’s characters are defined by the traumas (often unknown to others) that shaped their journey. Her characters’ ordeals occurred in their childhoods and have been the engine (consciously or unconsciously) driving their lives. Olive Kittredge says, ‘If you don’t think everyone is broken in some way, you’re wrong.” The novel’s characters have endured sexual abuse, suicide, alcoholism, disease, divorce, poverty, and the guilt of accidentally killing a parent.
The novel has a wistful tone as the characters wrestle with themselves and those they encounter. They share their fears and worries, their joys and pleasures, and the stories they hear about other people in town. Just when you are about to judge a character’s cruel action or poor choice, the character’s background is revealed, and you feel compassion instead.
The book can sometimes feel like a quirky collection of short stories. Still, Strout weaves them into an existential narrative about how people overcome their hardships and connect with others. Lucy Barton states, “People just live their lives with no real knowledge of anybody.”
In this world filled with so much suffering, Strout suggests that listening to others without judgment is a gift of love and the only antidote to the existential loneliness of our minds. This novel is poignant, provocative and packed with insights. I highly recommend Tell Me Everything. 5/5
By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult
Jodi Picoult’s By Any Other Name is a must-read for Shakespeare lovers. This novel is a thought-provoking story based on research about the real-life Emilia Bassano, who lived in the 16th century and might have authored some of William Shakespeare’s plays. A second thread follows Melina Green, a fictional playwright living in present-day NYC. Male producers steadily reject her work until a friend submits one of her plays using a man’s name. Compelling and engaging, this novel celebrates the talents of two women seeking to bring their words to life despite the prejudice they face.
Because the book details the customs of Elizabethan England, including facts about Bassano’s life, the notion of her authorship of Shakespeare’s plays seems plausible. Collaborating and selling plays were part of the theater milieu. Bassano received a robust private education as a young girl and then was forced to become a mistress to Lord Chamberlain who oversaw all theater productions in England. Like other writers, she could have sold her plays to Shakespeare. That she was a talented writer is not in question. After years of prohibition, in 1611, Bassano was the first woman whose poetry was published in England.
Shakespeare, the writer and actor, is also a character in the novel. However, the narrative offers many facts (sources are listed in the author’s notes) and questions whether Shakespeare wrote all the plays attributed to him. Among the facts that caught my attention: he wrote strong female characters and yet had two daughters who could not read or write, he never traveled to the locations where some of his plays took place, and there is no record that Shakespeare played a musical instrument. Yet, his plays collectively have more than two thousand musical references. When he died, he left no books or manuscripts. Nor is he buried in Westminster Abbey like other revered writers of England.
As I pondered Picoult’s hypothesis, I reminded myself that history is written by those in power. The men in charge of the theater would not consider women capable of such erudition. But even if the novel’s premise is not proved over time, By Any Other Name is an engrossing story that highlights two women writers, one real and one fictional, living centuries apart, yearning for their voices to be heard. The story is a reminder that despite progress, parity between men and women has yet to be achieved. I highly recommend this novel. 4/5
We Were The Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
There are really no words to describe the vicious cruelty inflicted by the Nazis and their collaborators on Jewish communities during WWII. Many groups experienced the brutality of the Nazis. But the systematic terror of the Jews was beyond horrific. This novel is a testament to one family’s luck, grit and love during one of the darkest chapters of human history.
Georgia Hunter’s fictionalized story We Were The Lucky Ones is based on the experiences of the Kurc Family: her grandfather, his four siblings and their parents who lived in Radom, Poland. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the author’s grandfather and his siblings were all in their twenties. As Jews, their safety became tenuous since the Nazis had no problem dragging people from their homes to send them to camps or simply shooting them on the spot. The plight of all these family members is gripping as they make different decisions about how best to stay alive.
Millions of Jews were shot, starved, tortured, and treated like animals. Georgia Hunter’s family was indeed lucky to have survived. Their physical and emotional endurance was strong, while their stories were terrifying and miraculous. They all suffered through six years of fear, uncertainty, starvation, violence and brutality. The melding of non-fiction and fiction makes the book more complicated, yet reading what happened to the Kurc family is to bear witness to the horrors of the Holocaust and the triumph of the human spirit. 4/5
