Elizabeth Strout’s Plunge Into Sentimentality

Early in Tell Me Everything, Elizabeth Strout’s latest novel, the retired teacher Olive Kitteridge reads all of the memoirs by Lucy Barton, a New York City writer who arrived in her coastal Maine town during the pandemic. At Olive’s request, an acquaintance named Bob Burgess has arranged for the two women to meet. “Olive did not know if Lucy was a famous writer or a not quite famous writer,” Strout writes, “but she decided it did not matter.”