Roger Brunyate's Reviews > Anything Is Possible

ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE
by Elizabeth Strout

Lucy Barton's Old Neighbors

In the first of the nine stories that comprise this loosely-structured novel, the old former janitor of a school in rural Illinois remembers Lucy Barton, the youngest child of a dirt-poor family who escaped to New York and found success as a writer. She has just come out with a memoir, which one gathers is Strout's miracle novel, My Name Is Lucy Barton. Lucy is mentioned in two or three of the other stories also, and in one, "Sisters," she actually appears, her first return in decades. You do not have to have read the earlier novel to enjoy this one, but it offers a curious payback for those that have. For most of Lucy Barton, as I noted in my review, you were waiting for the shoe to drop about what happened to Lucy in her childhood; one of Strout's great strokes of grace came in letting the footwear fall very gently, hinting enough to satisfy but leaving it at that. Here, though, she is much more specific; the almost feral background of Lucy and her family comes across with near-Gothic shock.

Too much? I might have been disappointed, were it not that the distinctive quality of the earlier book—its grace—is found in abundance here also. Strout returns to the structure of her Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge, depicting a loose community of interconnected characters through stories, each with its own focus and conclusion, but with the same figures mentioned in others. But the New England orneriness that had soured the earlier collection for me is here replaced by a Midwestern warmth. It is not sappy—many of the characters are edgy and awkward, often elderly too—but there is also a gentleness of understanding that reminds me of Kent Haruf or even Marilynne Robinson.

One example must suffice. Tommy Guptill, the janitor in the opening story, once owned a successful dairy farm, until his inheritance was wiped out by a disastrous fire. But Tommy has a secret that he has not shared even with his wife:

Privately, he thought of the fire as a sign from God to keep this gift tightly to him. Privately, because he did not want to be thought of as a man who made up excuses for a tragedy; and he did not want anyone—not even his dearly beloved wife—to think he would do this. But he had felt that night, while his wife kept the children over by the road—he had rushed them from the house when he saw that the barn was on fire—as he watched the enormous flames flying into the nighttime sky, then heard the terrible screaming sounds of the cows as they died, he had felt many things, but it was just as the roof of his house crashed in, fell into the house itself, right into their bedrooms and the living room below with all the photos of the children and his parents, as he saw this happen he had felt—undeniably—what he could only think was the presence of God, and he understood why angels had always been portrayed as having wings, because there had been a sensation of that—of a rushing sound, or not even a sound, and then it was as though God, who had no face, but was God, pressed up against him and conveyed to him without words—so briefly, so fleetingly—some message that Tommy understood to be: It’s all right, Tommy.

Few episodes in the book share the drama of this one, which takes place well before the novel opens. But the quiet moment with which the story ends, when Tommy finally shares his secret, is utterly typical and, I feel, even more amazing:

And then Tommy understood: that what he had kept from her their whole lives was, in fact, easily acceptable to her, and what he would keep from her now—his doubt (his sudden belief that God had never come to him)—was a new secret replacing the first. He took his hand from hers. “You might be right,” he said. A paltry thing he added, but it was true: He said, “I love you, Shirley.” And then he looked at the ceiling; he could not look at her for a moment or two.

I read the first few stories in growing wonder and deepening joy. Later, Strout expands her rural focus, including a wealthy arts patron, a successful actress, and a company director among her characters, and moving her setting to a small city, northern New England, or the Ligurian coast. I began to fear that the intensity of the opening might become dissipated. But, as with My Name Is Lucy Barton, no matter how far the people travel they never forget the simplicity of their roots. And the last story of all ends with a spiritual return so magical that I can only urge you to savor Strout's book slowly and wait for it.