‘Tell everything’, by Elizabeth Strout: do we want Lucy so much?

And, of course, at this point of the matter-wrapped to the physical-ential comings and turns of The Queen of Liabilities-Agresivas– One does not want anything other that Stout tells us everything about Lucy.

Of his problems with his former microbiologist William with whom he now coexists more or less platonically, of the widowhood of his second husband, of his disagreements with his daughters, and of your creative fluctuations when writing something new That, inevitably, you will have to see/read with your children’s-private-family traumas ever complete and exclamant signs of admiration and self -admitted while almost demanding an unquestionable ‘i love lucy’.

And, of course, The followers of his long and winding road They expected (I include myself) this ‘tell everything’ because there was the possibility that, finally – having brought Strout to the pandemic confinement of Lucy al Bob Burgess of his ‘The Burgess brothers’– There was the announced meeting of his other great female character/’Franchise’ that was worth the Pulitzer in 2008: the aggressive nothing passive Nonagenaria Olive Kitteredge.

And it occurs and does not disappoint and constitutes the best of the book with those chapters in which one and the other face/complement in a delicate while Didactic minute of narrators Exchanging plots as in the most intimate of literary workshops but, at the same time, with a forcefulness of King Kong versus Godzilla.

The rest is a bizarre Legal/Criminal ‘Thriller’ Subtram And the sufferings of the poor Bob whom Lucy does not delay (he had already sensed it in ‘Lucy and the sea’) in confirming as a new perfect victim for his hysteria barely disguised as suffering melancholy. All accompanied, I insist, of a prose that seems to nurture the best ofJohn Cheever and James Salter while erecting a kind of multiverse ‘à the’ marvel/dc of Stout and nothing more than strout with hypersensitive manners to whom – for moments – they would like a bit of the malice ‘freak’ of Anne Tyler or Charles Baxter.

Absence of absolute

And, again, the doubt, my question: is it aware and it proposed greatly Strout to create one of the most unfriendly characters with what is impossible not to sympathize or think that Lucy is someone adorable without questioning? Mystery … And somehow, it is good that this is because this doubt and ambiguity is what It will make us return to its side in inevitable upcoming deliveries To comfort her while we endure the desire to give her a couple of slaps.

Literature is, after all, exactly this and the same felt towards/with Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary: the absence of absolute and the proliferation of variables for which she is a bearable writer (in the sense that she takes you almost without realizing that you are taken by an expert manipulator) but, sometimes,Perhaps too confident in the affection/effect They feel/produce their creatures in readers always ready to be dragged.

In any case – truth and stoic hero of ‘tell everything’ – much worse the poor and surrendered bob bourges to whom Lucy seduces and attracts how siren To finally, abandon him shipwrecked of his love among the reefs of the coast of Maine.

Yes, let’s say it soon and cruelly: Bob stays with the desire without understanding very well what happened, what happened to him. AND What happened to him is that Lucy Barton happened. In any case, he will always hope that … because, after all, we were waiting for many years for Lucy and Olive to meet and face.

And here are, now, together and indestructible each in their own way, at the top.

Lucy in the sky with Olive.