Tell Me Everything
Oprah's Book Club
Notes
This was my first experience of Elizabeth Strout's work, although I'd loved the movie/series made of her "Olive Ketteridge." (Because Frances McDormand is the queen, but I digress...)
What a lovely, strange, absolutely normal book. It has a bit in common with the work of Kazuo Ishiguro, which I think of as an iron fist inside a padded velvet glove. It seems so ordinary, even soft, even bland, but you can't leave it alone and by the end that iron fist has reached inside and ripped out your heart.
"Tell Me Everything" is about a whole town/extended families/whatnot in Maine, but it's mostly about one extraordinary incredibly ordinary man, Bob Burgess. There's a murder, and the possibility of a trial; a suicide and various breaking ups/coming togethers of marriages and families. But at bottom, this is a book about love. Not lust, not sex. Love. And love is love.
Narcissism is involved.
"They love being the center of attention.
They cannot take criticism.
They are controlling.
They talk about themselves all the time.
They are not empathic. ...
They like to think they can save the world, there is often a grandiosity to them, and when they do good things for people they do so because it makes them feel bigger."
In another place:
"That's not evil, Larry. These are broken people. Big difference between being a broken person and being evil... And if you don't think everyone is broken I'm some way, you're wrong."
And again:
"The heart wants what the heart wants. This is true.... But there is another thing to consider, which is that the heart is only one part of an organism, and the organism's job is to survive."
A lovely book, and not one I'd normally have picked up, so I'm glad for the odd impulse that pulled me to it.
What a lovely, strange, absolutely normal book. It has a bit in common with the work of Kazuo Ishiguro, which I think of as an iron fist inside a padded velvet glove. It seems so ordinary, even soft, even bland, but you can't leave it alone and by the end that iron fist has reached inside and ripped out your heart.
"Tell Me Everything" is about a whole town/extended families/whatnot in Maine, but it's mostly about one extraordinary incredibly ordinary man, Bob Burgess. There's a murder, and the possibility of a trial; a suicide and various breaking ups/coming togethers of marriages and families. But at bottom, this is a book about love. Not lust, not sex. Love. And love is love.
Narcissism is involved.
"They love being the center of attention.
They cannot take criticism.
They are controlling.
They talk about themselves all the time.
They are not empathic. ...
They like to think they can save the world, there is often a grandiosity to them, and when they do good things for people they do so because it makes them feel bigger."
In another place:
"That's not evil, Larry. These are broken people. Big difference between being a broken person and being evil... And if you don't think everyone is broken I'm some way, you're wrong."
And again:
"The heart wants what the heart wants. This is true.... But there is another thing to consider, which is that the heart is only one part of an organism, and the organism's job is to survive."
A lovely book, and not one I'd normally have picked up, so I'm glad for the odd impulse that pulled me to it.