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Anything Is Possible: A Novel Hardcover – April 25, 2017

by Elizabeth Strout (Author)

20,482 ratings

Book 2 of 5: Amgash

Goodreads Choice Award nominee

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An unforgettable cast of small-town characters copes with love and loss in this “compulsively readable” (San Francisco Chronicle) novel from #1 bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout

“This book, this writer, are magnificent.”—Ann Patchett

Winner of The Story Prize • A Washington Post and New York Times Notable Book • One of USA Today’s top 10 books of the year

Recalling Olive Kitteridge in its richness, structure, and complexity, Anything Is Possible explores the whole range of human emotion through the intimate dramas of people struggling to understand themselves and others.

Here aretwo sisters: One trades self-respect for a wealthy husband while the other finds in the pages of a book a kindred spirit who changes her life. The janitor at the local school has his faith tested in an encounter with an isolated man he has come to help; a grown daughter longs for mother love even as she comes to accept her mother’s happiness in a foreign country; and the adult Lucy Barton (the heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton, the author’s celebrated New York Times bestseller) returns to visit her siblings after seventeen years of absence.

Reverberating with the deep bonds of family, and the hope that comes with reconciliation, Anything Is Possible again underscores Elizabeth Strout’s place as one of America’s most respected and cherished authors.

From the Publisher

Elizabeth Strout Character Chart outlining books and characters included in the Stroutaverse

Reverberates with the deep bonds of family and the hope that comes with reconciliation

Editorial Reviews

Review

“When Elizabeth Strout is on her game, is there anybody better? . . . This is a generous, wry book about everyday lives, and Strout crawls so far inside her characters you feel you inhabit them. . . . This is a book that earns its title. Try reading it without tears, or wonder.”—USA Today (four stars)

“Readers who loved My Name Is Lucy Barton . . . are in for a real treat. . . . Strout is a master of the story cycle form. . . . She paints cumulative portraits of the heartache and soul of small-town America by giving each of her characters a turn under her sympathetic spotlight.”—NPR

“These stories return Strout to the core of what she does more magnanimously than anyone else, which is to render quiet portraits of the indignities and disappointments of normal life, and the moments of grace and kindness we are gifted in response. . . . Strout hits the target yet again.”—The Washington Post

“In this wise and accomplished book, pain and healing exist in perpetual dependence, like feuding siblings.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Anything Is Possible confirms Strout as one of our most grace-filled, and graceful, writers.”—The Boston Globe

“Anything Is Possible keenly draws a portrait of a small town where options are few, where everyone’s business is everyone’s business, and where verdicts rendered while young follow you your whole life. . . . It joins a vast genre, and elevates it.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Neither novel nor linked story collection strikes me as adequate terms to describe this book’s ingenious structure. . . . Strout’s sentence style fits these Midwestern folks and tales: straightforward while also seeming effortlessly lyrical, seeded both with humor and bitterness like many of our days.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Stunning . . . Strout, always good, just keeps getting better.”—Vogue

“Full of searing insight into the darkest corners of the human spirit . . . Anything Is Possible is both sweeping in scope and incredibly introspective. That delicate balance is what makes its content so sharp and compulsively readable. . . . Strout’s winning formula . . . has succeeded once again. With assuredness, compassion and utmost grace, her words and characters remind us that in life anything is actually possible.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“While we recommend everything by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer—like, say her recent book My Name Is Lucy Barton—this novel, which explores life’s complexities through interconnected stores, stands on its own. . . . It’s a joy to read a modern master doing her thing.”—Marie Claire

“If you miss the charmingly eccentric and completely relatable characters from Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout’s best-selling My Name Is Lucy Barton, you’ll be happily reunited with them in Strout’s smart and soulful Anything Is Possible.”—Elle

“Strout pierces the inner worlds of these characters’ most private behaviors, illuminating the emotional conflicts and pure joy of being human, of finding oneself in the search for the American dream.”—NYLON

About the Author

Elizabeth Strout is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Olive Kitteridge, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Olive, Again, an Oprah’s Book Club pick; Anything Is Possible, winner of the Story Prize; My Name is Lucy Barton, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize; The Burgess Boys, named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post and NPR; Abide with Me, a national bestseller; and Amy and Isabelle, winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the International Dublin Literary Award, and the Orange Prize. Her short stories have been published in a number of magazines, including The New Yorker and O: The Oprah Magazine. Elizabeth Strout lives in New York City.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Sign

Tommy Guptill had once owned a dairy farm, which he’d inherited from his father, and which was about two miles from the town of Amgash, Illinois. This was many years ago now, but at night Tommy still sometimes woke with the fear he had felt the night his dairy farm burned to the ground. The house had burned to the ground as well; the wind had sent sparks onto the house, which was not far from the barns. It had been his fault—he always thought it was his fault—because he had not checked that night on the milking machines to make sure they had been turned off properly, and this is where the fire started. Once it started, it ripped with a fury over the whole place. They lost everything, except for the brass frame to the living room mirror, which he came upon in the rubble the next day, and he left it where it was. A collection was taken up: For a number of weeks his kids went to school in the clothes of their classmates, until he could gather himself and the little money he had; he sold the land to the neighboring farmer, but it did not bring much money in. Then he and his wife, a short pretty woman named Shirley, bought new clothes, and he bought a house as well, Shirley keeping her spirits up admirably as all this was going on. They’d had to buy a house in Amgash, which was a run-down town, and his kids went to school there instead of in Carlisle, where they had been able to go to school before, his farm being just on the line dividing the two towns. Tommy took a job as the janitor in the Amgash school system; the steadiness of the job appealed to him, and he could never go to work on someone else’s farm, he did not have the stomach for that. He was thirty-five years old at the time.

The kids were grown now, with kids of their own who were also grown, and he and Shirley still lived in their small house; she had planted flowers around it, which was unusual in that town. Tommy had worried a good deal about his children at the time of the fire; they had gone from having their home be a place that class trips came to—each year in spring the fifth-grade class from Carlisle would make a day of it, eating their lunches out beside the barns on the wooden tables there, then tromping through the barns watching the men milking the cows, the white foamy stuff going up and over them in the clear plastic pipes—to having to see their father as the man who pushed the broom over the “magic dust” that got tossed over the throw-up of some kid who had been sick in the hallways, Tommy wearing his gray pants and a white shirt that had Tommy stitched on it in red.

Well. They had all lived through it.

This morning Tommy drove slowly to the town of Carlisle for errands; it was a sunny Saturday in May, and his wife’s eighty-second birthday was just a few days away. All around him were open fields, the corn newly planted, and the soybeans too. A number of fields were still brown, as they’d been plowed under for their planting, but mostly there was the high blue sky, with a few white clouds scattered near the horizon. He drove past the sign on the road that led down to the Barton home; it still said SEWING AND ALTERATIONS, even though the woman, Lydia Barton, who did the sewing and alterations had died many years ago. The Barton family had been outcasts, even in a town like Amgash, their extreme poverty and strangeness making this so. The oldest child, a man named Pete, lived alone there now, the middle child was two towns away, and the youngest, Lucy Barton, had fled many years ago, and had ended up living in New York City. Tommy had spent time thinking of Lucy. All those years she had lingered after school, alone in a classroom, from fourth grade right up to her senior year in high school; it had taken her a few years to even look him in the eye.

But now Tommy was driving past the area where his farm had been—these days it was all fields, not a sign of the farm was left—and he thought, as he often thought, about his life back then. It had been a good life, but he did not regret the things that had happened. It was not Tommy’s nature to regret things, and on the night of the fire—in the midst of his galloping fear—he understood that all that mattered in this world were his wife and his children, and he thought that people lived their whole lives not knowing this as sharply and constantly as he did. Privately, he thought of the fire as a sign from God to keep this gift tightly to him. Privately, because he did not want to be thought of as a man who made up excuses for a tragedy; and he did not want anyone—not even his dearly beloved wife—to think he would do this. But he had felt that night, while his wife kept the children over by the road—he had rushed them from the house when he saw that the barn was on fire—as he watched the enormous flames flying into the nighttime sky, then heard the terrible screaming sounds of the cows as they died, he had felt many things, but it was just as the roof of his house crashed in, fell into the house itself, right into their bedrooms and the living room below with all the photos of the children and his parents, as he saw this happen he had felt—undeniably—what he could only think was the presence of God, and he understood why angels had always been portrayed as having wings, because there had been a sensation of that—of a rushing sound, or not even a sound, and then it was as though God, who had no face, but was God, pressed up against him and conveyed to him without words—so briefly, so fleetingly—some message that Tommy understood to be: It’s all right, Tommy. And then Tommy had understood that it was all right. It was beyond his understanding, but it was all right. And it had been. He often thought that his children had become more compassionate as a result of having to go to school with kids who were poor, and not from homes like the one they had first known. He had felt the presence of God since, at times, as though a golden color was very near to him, but he never again felt visited by God as he had felt that night, and he knew too well what people would make of it, and this is why he would keep it to himself until his dying day—the sign from God.

Still, on a spring morning as this one was, the smell of the soil brought back to him the smells of the cows, the moisture of their nostrils, the warmth of their bellies, and his barns—he had had two barns—and he let his mind roll over pieces of scenes that came to him. Perhaps because he had just passed the Barton place he thought of the man, Ken Barton, who had been the father of those poor, sad children, and who had worked on and off for Tommy, and then he thought—as he more often did—of Lucy, who had left for college and then ended up in New York City. She had become a writer.

Lucy Barton.

Driving, Tommy shook his head slightly. Tommy knew many things as a result of being the janitor in that school more than thirty years; he knew of girls’ pregnancies and drunken mothers and cheating spouses, for he overheard these things talked about by the students in their small huddles by the bathrooms, or near the cafeteria; in many ways he was invisible, he understood that. But Lucy Barton had troubled him the most. She and her sister, Vicky, and her brother, Pete, had been viciously scorned by the other kids, and by some of the teachers too. Yet because Lucy stayed after school so often for so many years he felt—though she seldom spoke—that he knew her the best. One time when she was in the fourth grade, it was his first year working there, he had opened the door to a classroom and found her lying on three chairs pushed together, over near the radiators, her coat as a blanket, fast asleep. He had stared at her, watching her chest move slightly up and down, seen the dark circles beneath her eyes, her eyelashes spread like tiny twinkling stars, for her eyelids had been moist as though she had been weeping before she slept, and then he backed out slowly, quietly as he could; it had felt almost unseemly to come upon her like that.

But one time—he remembered this now—she must have been in junior high school, and he’d walked into the classroom and she was drawing on the blackboard with chalk. She stopped as soon as he stepped inside the room. “You go ahead,” he said. On the board was a drawing of a vine with many small leaves. Lucy moved away from the blackboard, then she suddenly spoke to him. “I broke the chalk,” she said. Tommy told her that was fine. “I did it on purpose,” she said, and there was a tiny glint of a smile before she looked away. “On purpose?” he asked, and she nodded, again with the tiny smile. So he went and picked up a piece of chalk, a full stick of it, and he snapped it in half and winked at her. In his memory she had almost giggled. “You drew that?” he asked, pointing to the vine with the small leaves. And she shrugged then and turned away. But usually, she was just sitting at a desk and reading, or doing her homework, he could see that she was doing that.

He pulled up to a stop sign now, and said the words aloud to himself quietly, “Lucy, Lucy, Lucy B. Where did you go to, how did you flee?”

He knew how. In the spring of her senior year, he had seen her in the hallway after school, and she had said to him, so suddenly open-faced, her eyes big, “Mr. Guptill, I’m going to college!” And he had said, “Oh, Lucy. That’s wonderful.” She had thrown her arms around him; she would not let go, and so he hugged her back. He always remembered that hug, because she had been so thin; he could feel her bones and her small breasts, and because he wondered later how much—how little—that girl had ever been hugged.

Tommy pulled away from the stop sign and drove into the town; right there beyond was a parking space. Tommy pulled in to it, got out of his car, and squinted in the sunshine. “Tommy Guptill,” shouted a man, and, turning, Tommy saw Griff Johnson walking toward him with his characteristic limp, for Griff had one leg that was shorter than the other, and even his built-up shoe could not keep him from limping. Griff had an arm out, ready to shake hands. “Griffith,” said Tommy, and they pumped their arms for a long time, while cars drove slowly past them down Main Street. Griff was the insurance man here in town, and he had been awfully good to Tommy; learning that Tommy had not insured his farm for its worth, Griff had said, “I met you too late,” which was true. But Griff, with his warm face, and big belly now, continued to be good to Tommy. In fact, Tommy did not know anyone—he thought—who was not good to him. As a breeze moved around them, they spoke of their children and grandchildren; Griff had a grandson who was on drugs, which Tommy thought was very sad, and he just listened and nodded, glancing up at the trees that lined Main Street, their leaves so young and bright green, and then he listened about another grandson who was in medical school now, and Tommy said, “Hey, that’s just great, good for him,” and they clapped hands on each other’s shoulders and moved on.

In the dress shop, with its bell that announced his entrance, was Marilyn Macauley, trying on a dress. “Tommy, what brings you in here?” Marilyn was thinking of getting the dress for her granddaughter’s baptism a few Sundays from now, she said, and she tugged on the side of it; it was beige with swirling red roses; she was without her shoes, standing in just her stockings. She said that it was an extravagance to buy a new dress for such a thing, but that she felt like it. Tommy—who had known Marilyn for years, first when she was in high school as a student in Amgash—saw her embarrassment, and he said he didn’t think it was an extravagance at all. Then he said, “When you have a chance, Marilyn, can you help me find something for my wife?” He saw her become efficient then, and she said yes, she certainly would, and she went into the changing room and came back out in her regular clothes, a black skirt and a blue sweater, with her flat black shoes on, and right away she took Tommy over to the scarves. “Here,” she said, pulling out a red scarf that had a design with gold threads running through it. Tommy held it, but picked up a flowery scarf with his other hand. “Maybe this,” he said. And Marilyn said, “Yes, that looks like Shirley,” and then Tommy understood that Marilyn liked the red scarf herself but would never allow herself to buy it. Marilyn, that first year Tommy worked as a janitor, had been a lovely girl, saying “Hi, Mr. Guptill!” whenever she saw him, and now she had become an older woman, nervous, thin, her face pinched. Tommy thought what other people thought, it was because her husband had been in Vietnam and had never afterward been the same; Tommy would see Charlie Macauley around town, and he always looked so far away, the poor man, and poor Marilyn too. So Tommy held the red scarf with the gold threads for a minute as though considering it, then said, “I think you’re right, this one looks more like Shirley,” and took the flowery one to the register. He thanked Marilyn for her help.

“I think she’ll love it,” Marilyn said, and Tommy said he was sure she would.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 25, 2017
Edition ‏ : ‎ First Edition
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0812989406
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0812989403
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.73 x 0.92 x 8.55 inches
Book 2 of 5 ‏ : ‎ Amgash

Best Sellers Rank: #200,782 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #552 in Women's Domestic Life Fiction
- #685 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
- #1,264 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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Elizabeth Strout

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Elizabeth Strout is the author of the New York Times bestseller Olive Kitteridge, for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize; the national bestseller Abide with Me; and Amy and Isabelle, winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in London. She lives in Maine and New York City.

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Customers say

Customers find this novel compelling with excellently written narrative stories and interesting characters that recur throughout the book. Moreover, the writing is sparse and the pacing is complex, with one customer noting how it gradually unfolds the history. The book is emotionally engaging, though some find it pretty depressing, and while the stories are rich, some mention there's no real coherent storyline.

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Readability Writing quality Character development Insight Storyline Pacing Story quality Emotion level

323 customers mention "Readability"270 positive53 negative

Customers find the book highly readable, describing it as a real treat to read and a terrific novel, with one customer highlighting its wonderful vignettes.

"...books, Anything Is Possible has the stunning clarity and simplicity of Shaker furniture or a Thomas Eakins portrait, crafted with honesty and a sure..." Read more

"...novel is an interwoven collection of stories within stories where Strout slowly, quietly and thread by thread, weaves the reader into the seemingly..." Read more

"...The fine moments together with the thoughtful, favorable reviews of this book by perceptive readers gave me pause when I found myself, on balance,..." Read more

"...They are the touches that make a painting great. They add the select color. Being so visual, the author enables me to create my own canvases...." Read more

183 customers mention "Writing quality"173 positive10 negative

Customers praise the writing style of the book, describing it as fantastic, simple, and very readable, with one customer noting its brilliant portrayal of characters.

"...Like those two previous books, Anything Is Possible has the stunning clarity and simplicity of Shaker furniture or a Thomas Eakins portrait, crafted..." Read more

"...' stories is more diverse, nuanced, and the myriad perspectives of life and each other more varied, I found myself enjoying the sequel better than..." Read more

"...There are many effective truthful sentences in this book in scenes of family tension, struggle and hope...." Read more

"...The beautiful construction of such simple sentences say so much. It is like savoring a candy, the taste lingers...." Read more

180 customers mention "Character development"128 positive52 negative

Customers appreciate the character development in the book, noting that the characters are interesting and seamlessly woven into the story, with one customer highlighting the honesty in their dialogue.

"...The people in her stories come to life both as unique individuals as well as men and women you will recognize from your own experience...." Read more

"...These are very real people, resentful of their spouses, struggling with doubt and guilt, making presumptions about their neighbors...." Read more

"...It involves an actor and revolves around a contrived, embarrassing scene involving some political, personal criticism and observation directed..." Read more

"...It is like savoring a candy, the taste lingers. Every character is interwoven, bringing back Lucy from her prior novel...." Read more

105 customers mention "Insight"82 positive23 negative

Customers find the book insightful and thoughtful, with one customer noting how it reflects human nature in interesting ways.

"...and simplicity of Shaker furniture or a Thomas Eakins portrait, crafted with honesty and a sure hand...." Read more

"...and the interweaving of other characters' stories is more diverse, nuanced, and the myriad perspectives of life and each other more varied, I..." Read more

"...The stories explore tensions with families and loved ones. Scenes of despair and sorrow alternate with moments of resilience and hope...." Read more

"...This made it hard for me to follow (and this could very well be a personal issue)...." Read more

57 customers mention "Storyline"50 positive7 negative

Customers enjoy the storyline of this novel, appreciating its portrayal of real people and simple lives, with multiple customers noting how the stories build on each other to connect a community.

"...Everything was so real and the little details, that individually seemed insignificant certainly were not...." Read more

"...Strout creates a world that feels very real and intimate." Read more

"This is a collection of stories of people who knew or lived near Lucy Barton, the protagonist in Strout's 2016 novel "My Name is Lucy..." Read more

"...Oh, relatable! So even though I was disappointed in the structure, the writing is a ten." Read more

34 customers mention "Pacing"30 positive4 negative

Customers appreciate the pacing of the book, describing it as complex and moving, with one customer noting how the author weaves their stories together masterfully.

"...Many of the moments in these stories are poignant and effective...." Read more

"...It is like savoring a candy, the taste lingers. Every character is interwoven, bringing back Lucy from her prior novel...." Read more

"...Since the 4th is on the way I obviously love the story and this authors work. It resonated with me like no others have...." Read more

"...I love this series; just stellar work." Read more

164 customers mention "Story quality"80 positive84 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the book's stories, with some finding them rich and filled with interesting situations, while others note that the individual stories don't coalesce enough and end sadly.

"This novel is an interwoven collection of stories within stories where Strout slowly, quietly and thread by thread, weaves the reader into the..." Read more

"...got darker and darker and weirder and weirder and the final chapter completely confused me...." Read more

"...The first story is the best; Tommy lives his life based on his knowledge of a seminal event in this life; later he realizes there is another cause..." Read more

"...HOWEVER the copy I was sent is imperfectly put together...." Read more

108 customers mention "Emotion level"75 positive33 negative

Customers have mixed reactions to the emotional content of the book, with some finding it emotionally engaging while others describe it as pretty depressing with an undertow of sadness that starts with a sad incident.

"...Many of the moments in these stories are poignant and effective...." Read more

"...Instead, I remember a sense of contentment, of interpersonal understanding, like the feeling after you've digested a good meal...." Read more

"...But then the book got darker and darker and weirder and weirder and the final chapter completely confused me...." Read more

"...And the last story of all ends with a spiritual return so magical that I can only urge you to savor Strout's book slowly and wait for it." Read more

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Ceclila
OUR BEST OBSERVER OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR WRITING CONTEMPORARY FICTION TODAY
Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2017
Verified Purchase

EXCERPT Interrelated stories by the most acute observer of human behavior writing fiction today.

BOOK REVIEW: ELIZABETH STROUT’S LUMINOUSSHORT-STORY COLLECTION, ‘ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE’

BY CECILIA M. FORD, PH.D.

Elizabeth Strout’s astonishing new collection of short stories, Anything Is Possible, reconfirms her status as the most acute observer of human behavior writing fiction today. While each story about the local people who live in or around Amgash, Illinois, is a stand-alone gem, they are interrelated, much the way people in any community are in reality. We live our parallel lives, sometimes interacting, sometimes not at all, and then meeting up again later. Some characters central to later stories are introduced in an earlier one through town gossip and idle observations or recollections that people make to each other—as we all do, all the time.

Amgash is the hometown of the central character of Strout’s last novel, My Name Is Lucy Barton, and she and her family also make appearances in this book. Lucy herself is a relative of Olive Kittredge, the main character of Strout’s eponymous book of linked stories, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2009. It was also made into an acclaimed HBO series starring Frances McDormand.

Like those two previous books, Anything Is Possible has the stunning clarity and simplicity of Shaker furniture or a Thomas Eakins portrait, crafted with honesty and a sure hand. Strout has the uncanny ability to describe a character in a few simple sentences. The people in her stories come to life both as unique individuals as well as men and women you will recognize from your own experience.

Talking of a bitter woman whose life has turned out differently than she thought it would, a neighbor explains, “people need to feel superior to someone.” About another, Strout writes, “Life had simply not been what she thought it would be. Shelly had taken life’s disappointments and turned them into a house.”

Lucy Barton is one of the only people to have fled this small but not especially intimate community. These are people who harbor secrets, memories that shame them or thoughts they don’t think others will understand.

With many of Strout’s characters, what’s unsaid is often as important as what is said. Lucy’s cousin, a kind man named Abel Blaine, is one of the few other characters that left Amgash and did well, leaving their childhood of bitter poverty behind and starting a successful business. Now a grandfather, he reflects silently on his long marriage:

“After many years of marriage things get said, scenes occur, and there is a cumulative effect as well. All this sped through Abel’s heart, that the tenderness between husband and wife had long been attenuating and that he might have to live the rest of his life without it.”

Though Abel and Lucy have escaped small-town life and their deprived childhoods, he is aware of “how much one forgot but then lived with anyway—like phantom limbs.” Strout is a writer who intuitively understands the complex nature of how the past stays with us and how its scars are constantly reasserting themselves. Another character, a woman named Annie, reflects that “her own experience over the years now spread like a piece of knitting in her lap with different colored yarns—some dark—all through it.”

These dark threads provide an undercurrent of vulnerability to Strout’s characters. Their tenuous hold on what they have overcome—some, like Lucy’s brother Pete, not all that well—is a constant shadow that hovers nearby.

But the residents of Amgash are plain people despite the secrets of the dark past. Abel’s sister, Dottie, who with him endured desperate poverty as a child, now runs a bed-and-breakfast. She is divorced, often lonely, but “Dottie was not a woman to complain, having been taught by her decent Aunt Edna one summer—it seemed like a hundred years ago, and practically was—that a complaining woman was like pushing dirt beneath the fingernails of God, and this was an image that Dottie had never been able to fully dislodge.”

Elizabeth Strout is a Maine native, and all her previous books have been set either there or in New York, where she spends half her time. Amgash residents are much like the Maine people Strout writes about, though: small-town people living lives limited by geography, obligation, and habit. Yet, as the title of this collection suggests, they are frequently surprised by the turns their paths take and the things they learn about themselves as a result.

Often the characters are revealed through interior monologues as they reflect on these surprising turns. A particularly moving story examines the regret an old woman feels about the pain she has caused her favorite daughter (now middle-aged herself) by moving to Italy and marrying a younger man, after she endured a harsh marriage much longer than she wanted to. Strout writes, “And she could not tell her daughter that had she known what she was doing to her, to her dearest little Angel, she might not have done it.
But this was life! And it was messy!”

Family secrets, with their attendant messes, abound. Pete Barton appears in a story in which he prepares for a rare visit from Lucy. In another, a neighbor, Tommy, drops by. He is an older man who had been the school custodian who had kindly let Lucy stay late at school so she could do her homework in the heated building—the Bartons had been so poor that they lived in an unheated garage. Tommy has long wondered about Pete and Lucy’s odd father, damaged by the War (World War II), assuming that he was responsible for the pain he sees in Pete. On this particular visit he has an insight as he watches Pete destroy a sign with a sledgehammer that Mrs. Barton had put up to advertise her small business as a seamstress. Tommy thinks, “Oh, it was the mother. She must have been the really dangerous one.”

Except for Lucy, who has become a well-known writer who lives in New York, the residents of Amgash live outwardly quiet lives but are filled with inner turmoil and conflict. Their stories are about the way average people attempt to cope with their bewilderment. About Tommy, Strout observes, “It seemed the older he grew—and he had grown old—the more he understood that he could not understand this confusing contest between good and evil, and that maybe people were not meant to understand things here on earth.”

Again and again, the people Strout writes about defy expectations—both theirs and others’. Dark secrets, hidden depth, and unexpected decency are woven throughout these elegant stories. “People surprise you,” one character observes. “Not just their kindness, but also their sudden ability to express things in the right way.” And Strout has the ability to portray the human condition with stunning clarity, expressed in just the right way. You will recognize these people, and yourself, in this book.

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E. Sabina Brady
Wonderful prose, stronger than prequel, "My Name is Lucy Barton"
Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2020
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This novel is an interwoven collection of stories within stories where Strout slowly, quietly and thread by thread, weaves the reader into the seemingly insignificant interconnected lives of the ordinary, very human and often poverty touched residents of a small, mid-west farming community in the US. Her prequel "My Name is Lucy Barton" tangentially introduced us to both the town and its cast of characters (including Lucy's dysfunctional family who are central to "Anything is Possible", as well as their neighbors, school mates and various partners). Interestingly in this sequel, Lucy herself is seldom encountered in person. However, when she is, she plays a grounding and centering role underscoring that 'you can't go home again', but that home always resides within -- for better and (too often) worse. Lucy's (albeit purposefully limited) presence critically allows the reader to empathize and gain affection for the novel's other very flawed characters. Perhaps because the reader is allowed to wander away from Lucy, and the interweaving of other characters' stories is more diverse, nuanced, and the myriad perspectives of life and each other more varied, I found myself enjoying the sequel better than the prequel. Both should be read together however to get the full depth and breadth of this at times painful yet empathetic novel of human frailty, need and compassion. Stout's writing is beautifully crafted as she gradually unfolds her story in a methodical, yet non-linear and accretional way. That said, Marilyn Robinson remains my favorite in her ability to capture and plumb the human spirit within mundane, every day life.

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robin friedman
A Visit To Amagash
Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2018
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Elizabeth Strout's novel "Anything is Possible" (2017) takes the reader to the fictitious small town of Amagash, Illinois, through nine separate but interrelated stories about some of the town's residents or former residents. The book follows-up Strout's earlier novel "Lucy Barton" in which the title character escapes from a life of poverty in Amagash to become a successful writer in New York City. The characters in "Anything is Possible" are connected to Lucy Barton in different ways, and Barton herself is the primary character in one of the nine stories. I haven't read the earlier book. I think the second book is meant to stand on its own and doesn't presuppose familiarity with "Lucy Barton".

The stories are recounted in the third person but Strout makes an effort to get inside each of her characters from the inside. Most of the protagonists in the story were born desperately poor in rural areas outside the town or holding menial jobs. Some of the individuals have moved on to other things while others remain in poverty. The book shows interactions between the main characters and other residents of Amagash who are economically somewhat better off. The poorer people are often slighted and condescended to by people in better economic circumstances.

Many of the moments in these stories are poignant and effective. Strout delves into the pasts of her characters and to the many disappointments and hardships they have faced in their lives. The stories explore tensions with families and loved ones. Scenes of despair and sorrow alternate with moments of resilience and hope.

One of the stories I enjoyed in this book is titled "Mississippi Mary". After a marriage of 51 years, Mary leaves her husband to live with her lover in Italy. When a daughter comes to visit, Mary is shown to possess compassion and dignity.

The chapter titled "Sister" shows Lucy Barton returning briefly to Amagash after a 17-year absence. Lucy and her sister Vicky have a short discussion about writing, focusing on Lucy's efforts in her work to write the "truthful sentence". Vicky has heard her sister discuss the "truthful sentence" in a lecture that she finds on the Internet. Understanding the difficulty of writing a "truthful sentence" seems to be a quality shared by Strout and her character. It is a difficult task indeed to be truthful and to write truthfully. In the story, Vicky explores the situation when her sister Lucy claims she has been too busy to visit:

"Busy? Who isn't busy?" ... Hey, Lucy, is that what's called a truthful sentence? Didn't I just see you on the computer giving a talk about truthful sentences? "A writer should write only what is true'. Some crap like that you were saying. And you sit there and say to me, 'I've been very busy' . Well I don't believe you. You didn't come here because you didn't want to."

There are many effective truthful sentences in this book in scenes of family tension, struggle and hope. The fine moments together with the thoughtful, favorable reviews of this book by perceptive readers gave me pause when I found myself, on balance, disliking this book. With mixed feelings, I had to conclude this book didn't work. Part of the reason was the ham-fisted approach to the poverty of her characters, with the author's all-too-frequent reminder of how many of her protagonists were forced to eat from garbage cans and dumpsters in their childhoods. The more worrisome part of the book for me was the apparent heavy negativity towards sexuality. Virtually every story in this book turns on a type of sexual misbehavior, most of which involve a man abusing a woman or betraying his spouse. The heroes in this book, as with Mississippi Mary, tend to be the women who get away. There is a sense of sharpness and anger in this book, particularly women's anger at men in the context of male-female relationships that weaken the book's efforts to portray small town life. I thought of the works of Kent Haruf and Marilyne Robinson. Both these writers have a strong sense of human frailty and write with realism and both write with a broader perspective than that shown in this book. The final chapter in this book, "Gift" ultimately settled my view against this book. It involves an actor and revolves around a contrived, embarrassing scene involving some political, personal criticism and observation directed against a former residents of Amagash who went on to achieve a degree of economic success. I thought on balance the book was more interested in criticizing than in depicting American small town life.

I agree with the goal Lucy Barton expresses of writing a "truthful sentence". I agree as well that this goal is difficult of attainment for writers as well as for reviewers and readers. Not everyone always agrees on the nature of a truthful sentence. As best as I can put my own truthful sentence, this book didn't work for me.

Robin Friedman

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sara
Grandioso
Reviewed in Italy on September 1, 2017
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Wow! Un viaggio nell'america autentica. Un viaggio nei sentimenti. E poi l'ultimo racconto... un capolavoro. Da leggere e da regalare

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Ruth Adams
Elizabeth Strout is very Like Alice Munroe
Reviewed in Canada on June 1, 2017
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Elizabeth Strout is very Like Alice Munroe, the Nobel winner. Her stories are based on reality, what really happens in families and she cuts to the bone. I find her novels very uplifting and she is a wonderful writer. Her books are keepers and I never even lend them to others because they demand re-reading if only to be reminded that her characters can be identified among ones in our own family and friends or even neigbors.
Ruth Adams

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Claire McAlpine
Lucy Barton's rural childhood neighbours demand their own stories
Reviewed in France on April 4, 2018
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The inhabitants of Amgash appear to have invaded the imagination of Elizabeth Strout, not satisfied with being mere peripheral characters in her excellent novel My Name is Lucy Barton.

That book, which was a novel to us, is a memoir to them, one that a few of the characters we encounter in this set of stories will buy and read, one of them even attending a book signing near Chicago and meeting her again many, many years post their shared childhoods.

The characters vary in their kindnesses and quirks, in the opening story Pete, Lucy’s brother, resents his neighbour Tommy’s visits, carried out with heartfelt intention and yet perceived as a kind of torture, so much of what occurs between people is misunderstood due to the lack of communication or misreading of intentions.

In a voice without belligerence, even with a touch of apology to it, he said, “Look Tommy. I’d like it if you didn’t keep coming over here.” Pete’s lips were pale and cracked, and he wet them with his tongue, looking at the ground. For a moment Tommy was not sure he heard right, but as he started to say “I only-” Pete looked at him fleetingly and said, “You do it to torture me, and I think enough time has gone by now.”

We find out what happened to the pretty Nicely girls, whose mother left the home after a brief affair that went wrong and lived a quiet life of regret nearby for years afterwards. Through Patty, we meet Lucy’s niece Lila, who has never met her Aunt but shares strong opinions of her with Patty, her school guidance counsellor.

Patty said, “That’s a nice name Lila Lane.” The girl said, I was supposed to be named for my aunt, but at the last minute my mom said, Fuck her.”
Patty took the papers and bounced their edges against the desk.
The girl sat up straight, and spoke with suddenness. “She’s a bitch. She thinks she’s better than any of us. I never even met her.”

Dottie runs a Bed and Breakfast and the steady churn of customers keeps her busy and entertained with company. Sometimes she meets the wealthy who wish to confide in her, it turns out they can be lonely too.

The next morning at breakfast Shelley did not acknowledge Dottie. Not even a thank you for the whole wheat toast. Dottie was very surprised; her eyes watered with the sudden sting of this. But then she understood. There was an old African proverb Dottie had read one day that said, “After a man eats, he becomes shy.” And Dottie thought of that now with Shelley. Shelley was like the man in the proverb, having satisfied her needs, she was ashamed. She had confided more than she wanted to, and now Dottie was somehow to blame.

In a later story though we become aware of a change, often there’ll be just a passing reference to the character who inhabited the previous story, one that informs us of what followed on, and gives a kind of quiet closure, in this respect it reminds me a lot of Yoko Ogawa’s stories in her collection Revenge, there is that thread that connects the stories, it creates a little frisson of excitement when you spot it.

It is such a pleasure to spend time within the pages of Strout’s imaginary characters, who move from references into fully formed characters with such ease, this collection had me wondering if one of these characters might push in on her and demand a novel too. Tt wouldn’t surprise me – who is in control here, the characters or the author? I have a feeling her characters have a strong will of their own, and that this book was written to try to keep a few of them quiet, so she could move on to the next story that’s no doubt already brewing.

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marilyn
Sensational
Reviewed in Australia on October 4, 2018
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Wonderful. A tonic. Exquisite writing. I admire the sheer honesty and emotional precision displayed by the author. I can only describe the experience of reading this book as a moral relief. I had thought no one cared any more for the ordinary life and the exquisite nuances of the human condition.

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Janie U
Profiling a community with Lucy Barton at it's core
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 31, 2022
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I've read a couple of books by this author and enjoyed them so was interested to come across this one, being published just 5 years ago.
It is 254 pages with 9 chapters that are names rather than numbered.
The book is structured in the format of 9 short stories, each one focusing on one character in the community, all linked by Lucy Barton. Lucy had a difficult childhood in the town then moved away to become successful in New York. Each chapter is perfectly formed - standing alone as a story but then linking beautifully with all the other chapters to give a complete novel.
My Name is Lucy Barton is the first book in the series and this is the second (I didn't realise this until I started reading). It is not necessary to have read the previous novel before this one although it will add back story. If you haven't read Lucy Barton then it would work to read it after this one as the story will be much more complete and you will get more historical context.
Each of the chapters start with a fairly cosy setup then quickly descend into darkness, some being quite disturbing for the characters and the reader.
Cleverly, as each chapter revealing more about it's subject, the style of writing changes to match their personality.
I was surprised which people has been chosen by the author but was fascinated to hear their voices. I wanted to know their unique stories and find out more about why they see the world in the way they do.
This is such an amazing book, structurally as well as on many other levels. There is no particular plot, just a perfect observation of a group of people connected by community.

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Anything Is Possible: A Novel Hardcover – April 25, 2017

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5.0 out of 5 stars OUR BEST OBSERVER OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR WRITING CONTEMPORARY FICTION TODAY

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful prose, stronger than prequel, "My Name is Lucy Barton"

3.0 out of 5 stars A Visit To Amagash

Top reviews from other countries

5.0 out of 5 stars Grandioso

5.0 out of 5 stars Elizabeth Strout is very Like Alice Munroe

4.0 out of 5 stars Lucy Barton's rural childhood neighbours demand their own stories

5.0 out of 5 stars Sensational

5.0 out of 5 stars Profiling a community with Lucy Barton at it's core

OUR BEST OBSERVER OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR WRITING CONTEMPORARY FICTION TODAY

Wonderful prose, stronger than prequel, "My Name is Lucy Barton"

A Visit To Amagash

Grandioso

Elizabeth Strout is very Like Alice Munroe

Lucy Barton's rural childhood neighbours demand their own stories

Sensational

Profiling a community with Lucy Barton at it's core