Tell Me Everything, by Elizabeth Strout review: 'a rich array of characters'

There are characters here familiar to us from earlier novels, notably the novelist Lucy Barton who is easily, and not, I think, wrongly taken to be the novelist’s alter ego. Here she has come from New York with her divorced second husband William to a small town in Maine to escape the Covid-19 pandemic.

Still, though Lucy has a central role in the novel this is, the first sentence affirms, the story of Bob Burgess, a semi-retired lawyer, now 65 and living with his wife Margaret, a Unitarian minister whose preaching rather embarrasses him. Bob, we are told, has a "big heart", though he wouldn't claim that for himself, and bears a load of guilt from a death in his childhood. Bob is a big man and a gentle one. He has known Lucy for some time and is more than a little in love with her, though he would never confess this to her or indeed anyone. He lives by a code of honour, though he wouldn't say that either. He has a brother in New York, a successful lawyer, whose professional life has been more successful than his family one. Bob cares for other people; that is his strength, but caring for others doesn't necessarily make for happiness. There is something unfulfilled in Bob.

Strout opens the curtains on many lives - wretched childhoods, uncaring or careless parents, relationships that could never have gone well. Much of this is revealed in stories exchanged by Lucy and a very old lady in the town, who remembers the lives of other people long after their death.

There are lots of little stories from both past and present, but then comes a new and horrid one. An old woman disappears. She lives alone with her son, who seems to have no sort of life, and then her body is discovered. The State police are sure the middle-aged son has killed her. Here again, Strout's sympathy and generosity are clear. The dead woman was horrible in most people's view, but she had had a wretched life, abused as a child, deserted by her husband, deeply unpopular when working in the school canteen.

One of Strout's many admirable qualities is her generosity of understanding. This distinguishes Lucy, most of the time, and Bob always, even when his care for his client runs parallel with the death of his brother’s wife and the harsh rejection of the brother by his son. Few novelists handle mental and emotional pain better or more sympathetically than Strout. She is also as always very good on weather and its influence on mood. Some novelists seem to despise making much use of weather, surely mistakenly.

Strout writes with the lightest of touches. She is often funny, rarely however at her characters' expense. There are indeed times when her rich array of characters and the often surprising stories they tell or which are told about them might lead you to think that she is echoing Shakespeare’s Puck, who said "Lord, what fools these mortals be"; and of course we are all indeed often fools. Strout recognizes our folly, understands it, and turns condemnation round to show the courage that is often needed to endure life.

She never pretends that life is easy, but she is never gloomy and rarely condemns her characters. At the same time her wide-ranging sympathy doesn't exclude humour. There are always laughs and smiles in her novels. They are artful books, though written in what may seem the most casual and indeed artless of manners. Even in their lightest moments, however, of which there are a great many here, she never lets you forget that there is as much darkness as light in our lives.

Tell Me Everything, by Elizabeth Strout, Viking, £16.99