Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout

Published: 2017, Penguin Random House

Genre: Fiction

Themes: Small town America, poverty, secrets

My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤

Secrets.

Secrets from the past or the present. Secrets carried like a stone in a shoe, unseen but always there rubbing, rubbing and not going away.

Elizabeth Strout exposes the carefully hidden secrets kept by some apparently nice people from the rural town of Amgash, Illinois, and by the time you get to the end of this novel you will be watching your friends and neighbours wondering what they might be hiding from you. We all like to make wild assumptions about people (well that is what gossip is for, surely?) but what if all that secret stuff came tumbling out? How would they cope and how would it change them?

The secrets in this book range from heartbreaking to downright horrible and the reader is a voyeur of the unfolding events. I could almost hear my mother's voice warning me to 'Stop gawping and come along. That is not your business!' but I turned back to look anyway. Same with this book, I wanted to know how each thread turned out and thank goodness Elizabeth Strout is very good at tying off the ends.

We re-visit Lucy Barton from Strout's earlier novel, My Name is Lucy Barton and this story works even if you have not read the earlier book. You need to keep your eye on the ball as the story moves from chapter to chapter otherwise you won't remember how all the characters are linked through their varying degrees of separation. Each person's story is quite engaging but I felt the novel didn't build in quite the same way as Lucy Barton or Amy and Isabelle, which was Strout's debut novel. Just I was settling into one story-line we were off to the next person.

However, you are always on firm ground with Strout and the quality of writing carries this book forward but the ending felt a little contrived. It's the sort of book that could easily go on for ever, so the only way to close it down is to throw one of the characters a metaphorical bomb where anything written afterwards would be too much of an anti-climax.

Good stuff though and well worth reading.

Comments

Violeta by Isabel Allende

Published: 2022, Bloomsbury Genre: Fiction Themes: South America, family relationships, business My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤ If I ever tell my life story, I will take a leaf out of Violeta's book and make sure you understand that everybody loved me, and despite all sorts of questionable behaviour on my part, I leave the world as a winner. This is the story of a hundred year life. Violeta is approaching the end, but before she goes she is determined to write out her life story for someone she loves dearly. You don't get to know who that special someone is for most of the book, but that just serves to give the narrative a little twist. I didn't much like the character of Violeta but I understand that people who don't go round upsetting the apple cart don't make for very interesting stories. With such a great time span to play with, Isabel Allende had plenty of scope for changing Violeta's circumstances and adding in references to world events to keep the reader...

Holding by Graham Norton

Published: October 2016, Hodder and Stoughton Genre: fiction Themes: Ireland, crime, secrets, relationships, family My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤ I went into the library looking for a book by Graham Norton as I keep seeing positive comments about his books on Twitter, and I felt I might be missing something. Holding seems to be his first book, and the library copy has a Radio 2 Book Club sticker on it, and I think it's fair to say that it's a perfect book for that reading group. It's a chatty style of writing that I could imagine would be how Graham would recount a tale if he was in conversation with someone, and there are sufficient strong elements to the plot-line to keep it interesting to the end. When I first started reading I thought it was going to be a bit thin on plot, as much of the story involved character descriptions, and I was starting to wonder how it was going to pull together. Then the dramatic events began to unfold and, once I could see how everyon...

The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper

Publisher: Head of Zeus, 2021 Genre: Fiction Themes: Ancient Pompeii, slaves, brothel My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤ If, like me, you spent most of your history lessons looking out the window and didn't really absorb very much about the ancient Roman Empire, nil desperandum, as you will still manage perfectly well with this book. Set in first century Pompeii, the story follows the life of Amara, a young Greek woman who has been shipped to Pompeii as a slave and then bought by the owner of The Wolf Den brothel. As the daughter of a doctor, she was bought up in relatively comfortable circumstances, but a series of terrible events turned her life upside down and she is now trapped in an endless cycle of fear and degradation with almost no hope of escape. Amara is one of a group of slaves working in the Wolf Den, and they do what they can to protect one another from serious harm, but Amara knows that if she wants anything better for herself, she must make the brothel ow...

dittybox

Search This Blog