Anything Is Possible

I liked My Name Is Lucy Barton well enough, but I remember wishing I had read it in a book club, where discussions might have explored some of the subtext and the minor characters. So I was thrilled when I realized that’s exactly what Strout has done here, in this collection of nine short stories that are linked through the shared characters (now grown-up) of Lucy Barton’s childhood, including Lucy herself.

Linked stories are my favorite structure of fiction, and here the linking is used to perfection, deeply exploring characters from a full-frontal perspective in one story and then from sideways glances in others. These characters and their stories interested me so much more than Lucy Barton ever did ... although they do make me show more want to re-read Lucy Barton, just to encounter the first mentions of them again, now that I know them so well.

(Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher.) show less

Strout's "Winesburg Ohio," interconnected stories about the inner lives of people in a small town...as if that could capture it. She is in top form here, achingly real, beautifully understated, authentic dialogue that hangs in the air with all that is unsaid or unsayable. Probably should be five stars, except that Strout's next book may be even better.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this novel is how readable it is. I found myself having to ration out the books so that I wouldn't consume it in a single sitting.

Yet this isn't page-turning in the conventional sense. There's no complex and clever plot to unravel, no sense of threat or intrigue to tease yourself with page after page. There as just life as we all live it.

What makes it compelling is not that I want to know what happens next but I want to know these people and, in the process, I want to know more about how their experiences mirror mine.

In each chapter, I get to walk a mile in someone else's shoes. It's not a first-person experience but rather a guided tour with the authorial voice capturing every emotion, memory and show more reaction with an empathy so deep you could drown in it.

The book opens with an eighty-three-year-old man driving into town to buy his wife a birthday present and then stopping in on a neighbour on his way home. That's it as far as action goes yet during this ride I found out about the events that shaped this man's life, about his beliefs and his hopes, about his attachment to the bright but fearful and isolated Lucy Barton who was once a student at the school he was a janitor in and who now lives in New York City and is a writer of well-known books. I come to understand his ability to "live through" disaster, his impulse to help others and the relationship he believes he has with God.

There's a whole novel, just in that one chapter. Each of the other eight chapters is like that, sweeping me along not just in someone's story but in their current experience and choices. Each chapter focuses on someone who was in the supporting cast of characters when Lucy Barton was recalling her childhood in *My Name Is Lucy Barton", In "Anything Is Possible", each of them gets to be centre-stage for a while, the prime mover in their own universe. Each universe exercises a gravitational pull on at least one of the other universes in the book.

Each of the nine chapters could be seen as the free-standing short story describing how an individual sees the world, but we're being offered more than a quilt of nine squares here. This is a novel with a consistent authorial voice, leading us through the thoughts and emotions of the characters in the story and in the process, highlighting the themes that connect them and all of us as we try to live our lives.

I see this novel as a three-dimensional piece of art that, although the eye first reads it from left to right, becomes something non-linear: a set of lens viewing a common space but from different angles and different focal lengths. From their different perspectives, the chapters describe a central space, that we all recognise and share but can rarely regard clearly because we are so tangled up in our own story. It's a place where our hope, shame, anger, love, compassion and desires meet.

That all sounds rather complicated and perhaps a little dry but the experience of reading the book is one of easy access to sometimes painfully accurate experiences that resonate as real. Each room in the house is welcoming and built on a human scale. The true nature of the architecture only dawns on you later.

This is a book that, as one of the characters says of Lucy Barton's novel, "made her feel understood and less alone". There are big themes here but I believe the main one is that, while all our lives are unique, we do not have to be alone if we are prepared to forgive ourselves and others.

One of the themes of the book is the nature of love. One character sums it up by saying:

We’re all just a mess, Angelina, trying as hard we can. We love imperfectly, Angelina, and it’s ok.

One of my favourite characters, the youngest of the Pretty Nicely sisters, now sometimes called Fatty Patty by the children at the school she works in, understands that empathy is difficult because we are too self-absorbed to make space for it:

Everyone,she understood, was mainly and mostly interested in themselves.

She also understands that love is what breaks down the walls of our isolation and allows us to be better. She refers to it as a protective skin:

This was the skin that protected you from the world, this loving of another person you shared your life with.

The characters show us that we all love imperfectly BUT that it is still possible to choose our own path, to change the plot of our own story and to influence the stories of others:

One of the things that occupy that central space that the stories share is how our past shapes us. In the final chapter, the main character, once poor and now rich, is puzzled by the power of his past to shape his present:

"What puzzled Able about life was how much one forgot but then live with anyway, like a phantom limb"

In these stories, shame plays a huge part in shaping people's perception of themselves and others. Shame walks hand in hand with attitudes to class. Both create ostracism, disempowerment, unkindness, and derision. The make some people less real than others. They erode self-worth and foster abuse.

Violence, whether we commit it or are on the receiving end of it, also leaves permanent scare, whether it's PTSD from acts committed during a war on being subject to violent abuse throughout childhood.

I found one of the hardest chapters to experience was the one where Lucy Barton comes home and meets with her brother and her sisters in the tiny house they all suffered through their childhood in. The present pain caused by past abuse is almost unbearable. When the talk turns to the terrible things their parents did, Lucy cries out in denial and says "It wasn't that bad", all the while knowing that it was.

This is one of a number of examples that show how hard it is for us to see clearly, to remember honestly (or at all), and to focus on the important choices in our lives.

The message I took away from the book is that living through things we don't is unavoidable. Life cannot be pain-free. We live and love imperfectly. We drag our past after us. Compassion, forgiveness and kindness are the best salves available to us.

I think this book will become a classic. I highly recommend it.

If you'd like to get an insight into what Elizabeth Strout thinks of her novel, read the interviews below.

Seattle Times article "Talking to author Elizabeth Strout about her new novel, ‘Anything Is Possible" where Elizabeth Strout explains how she wrote the book and comments on some of the themes in it.

Interview with Penguin Books where she talks about her hope that her books will make people feel less alone.

I listened to the audiobook, which was perfectly performed by Kimberly Farr. Click on the SoundCloud link below to listen to a sample of her performance.

[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/319870206" params="color=#ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true" width="100%" height="300" iframe="true" /] show less

There's no way that I can write anything that accurately sums up my reaction to Elizabeth Strout's new book, Anything is Possible. In form, it's most closely related to Olive Kitteridge, being a collection of closely related short stories about people from Amgash, the small town where the protagonist of Strout's previous novel, My Name is Lucy Barton grew up. Amgash is a struggling agricultural community, whose residents work as high school guidance counselors, janitors, nurse's aides and housewives. Those who leave enjoy broader prospects, but are nonetheless shaped by the town they grew up in. Lucy Barton's existence hangs over the town; she's a success story, but the residents are ashamed of how she and her family were ostracized and show more of the bleak poverty that clung to them.

Each story stands on its own, but is made richer by being situated with other stories about the same place, with central characters from one story being mentioned in another. I'm a sucker for the interconnected short story format, and I'm a fan of Strout's understated but fine writing, but I'm pretty sure this book is very, very good. show less

With this book, I complete my visit to Amgash, Illinois, the small midwestern town that serves as the setting for the three-novel series by Elizabeth Strout:
(1) MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON
(2) ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE
(3) OH, WILLIAM

I did NOT read the books in 1-2-3 order, but I don't think it really mattered.
#1 is Lucy Barton's back story, focused on her disadvantaged childhood, escape from Amgash, marriage, and relationship with her mother.
#3 centers on Lucy's relationship with her husband, William and the family secret he uncovers.
#2 is different. It's not so much about Lucy, though she does make a few appearances.

Instead, like Strout's Pulitzer Prize winning book OLIVE KITTERIDGE, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE is a collection of short stories, show more about individuals who are connected (some closely, some distantly) to Lucy. Peers who tormented her as a child -- now grown up. Siblings Lucy left behind in Amgash. A few distant relatives and acquaintances.

Like all of Strout's writing, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE skillfully and lovingly examines people's deepest vulnerabilities. What's behind the hostility Lucy's sister displays? What is the ex-soldier with PTSD really thinking? Why did the school janitor let Lucy stay late everyday after school? Is there more contentment among those who achieved financial success? Ultimately, Strout reveals how infrequently any of us show our true selves to one another.

Underlying all these stories is Strout's exploration of the notion of loneliness. Whether single or married, old or young, living alone or with others, prospering or not -- everyone experiences aloneness. And in many different manifestations.

The portraits of these people are thoughtful, nuanced, and emotional. And they teach so much about the human condition. If that sounds interesting to you, you won't want to miss this book. show less

With this book, I complete my visit to Amgash, Illinois, the small midwestern town that serves as the setting for the three-novel series by Elizabeth Strout:
(1) MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON
(2) ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE
(3) OH, WILLIAM

I did NOT read the books in 1-2-3 order, but I don't think it really mattered.
#1 is Lucy Barton's back story, focused on her disadvantaged childhood, escape from Amgash, marriage, and relationship with her mother.
#3 centers on Lucy's relationship with her husband, William and the family secret he uncovers.
#2 is different. It's not so much about Lucy, though she does make a few appearances.

Instead, like Strout's Pulitzer Prize winning book OLIVE KITTERIDGE, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE is a collection of short stories, show more about individuals who are connected (some closely, some distantly) to Lucy. Peers who tormented her as a child -- now grown up. Siblings Lucy left behind in Amgash. A few distant relatives and acquaintances.

Like all of Strout's writing, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE skillfully and lovingly examines people's deepest vulnerabilities. What's behind the hostility Lucy's sister displays? What is the ex-soldier with PTSD really thinking? Why did the school janitor let Lucy stay late everyday after school? Is there more contentment among those who achieved financial success? Ultimately, Strout reveals how infrequently any of us show our true selves to one another.

Underlying all these stories is Strout's exploration of the notion of loneliness. Whether single or married, old or young, living alone or with others, prospering or not -- everyone experiences aloneness. And in many different manifestations.

The portraits of these people are thoughtful, nuanced, and emotional. And they teach so much about the human condition. If that sounds interesting to you, you won't want to miss this book. show less

A fine collection of short stories featuring characters mentioned in Strout’s novel My Name is Lucy Barton. Beautifully written and, for me, far more engaging than the novel as the stories are more unexpected and wonderfully varied.
As well as tenderness and humour, Strout can maintain tension in these seemingly simple stories, just because you as a reader are unsure where Strout wants to take you. For example, the final story about Abel Blaine (Lucy Barton’s cousin) should (you think) mirror the goodwill of the play of a Dickensian A Christmas Carol, but in about 30 pages Strout creates multiple ways in which the story might develop.