Tell Me Everything: Oprah's Book Club: A Novel

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What’s it about?

Elizabeth Strout returns to Crosby, Maine to tell another story. This novel revolves around Lucy Barton and her special friendship with Bob Burgess. We see many of Elizabeth Strout’s old cast of characters in this story- including Olive Kitteridge.

What did it make me think about?

The importance of being heard- and the importance of truly listening. Bob Burgess understands that, “People did not care, except for maybe one minute. It was not their fault, most just could not really care past their own experiences.”

Should I read it?

As many of you know, I LOVE Elizabeth Strout’s novels! I was so excited to pick this one up. And I also know that many of you don’t. Elizabeth Strout writes about the beauty in the small moments of life. Some have told me that these books don’t have enough action. I get this, but I think that may be the whole point. SO I HAVE GIVEN UP TRYING TO PERSUADE YOU! If you did not like her novels before- you will not like this one. If, like me, she is one of your favorite writers- you will savor every page.

Quote-

“People suffer. They live, they have hope, they even have love, and they still suffer. Everyone does. Those who think they’ve not suffered are lying to themselves.”

A book featuring Olive Kittridge, yes, please. There was mystery, joy, sadness, and a powerful reminder that there is importance in the ordinary lives we live and the power of telling our stories. I enjoyed being reunited with these characters. I love how Strout takes the ordinary and shows us how profound our lives are.

While there are things about GR that are a little annoying, one of the things I do like is their Year in Books. It’s fun to see all the stats they provide. At the start of the year, I set a bunch of challenges for myself, and it looks like I fell a little short on most of them. I had a reading challenge of 150, which I did make with 155 books this year. Yeah, I’m going to stick to that one since it’s a very realistic goal.

One of my favorite things that I love about reading is catching up on my fave characters and series. So, how did I do? Meh, ok; not as well as I have in the past and not as much as I wanted too either. My 2025 goal for catching up on current series was 50% of the books I read would be new installments from the current series that I’m reading. I fell a little short at 46%, not too bad. This year, I would really like to spend more time catching up on my fave series and characters. I’m going to shoot for 50% again, which shouldn’t be that hard since they are the kind of books that I do enjoy reading the most.

GR’s 2025 Reading Challenge Group’s challenge was called TBR Jar. It was an exercise challenging members to tackle their TBR lists. While I didn’t engage in the actual challenge, at the beginning of the year, I did make a commitment to tackle my own TBR list. I had set a goal of 25% of the books I read to be from my to-read closet. How did I do? Not very well. Approximately 17% of the books I read in 2025 were books that had been on my TBR list for more than two years. I am going to continue tackling my TBR list and am going to challenge myself to commit to 20% of my reading goal to books that have been on my TBR for two years or more.

Other than health and diet books or dog health and training books, I don’t read a lot of non-fiction books. I blame it on the day job and the daily news; I like to devote my limited reading time to rest, relax and escape from the “real world” for just a little while. Hence, my love of fiction, all kinds of fiction from crime thrillers, to fantasy, to sci-fi, to historical fiction and some romance too. However, early this year, a dear friend challenged me to “read something out of my comfort zone”. For me, that would be biographies, memoirs, and war stories. I set a goal 15% of the books I read to be “out of my comfort zone”. How did I do? Not so well. Approximately 8% of the books I’ve read were counted in my challenge. However, some of the books I read were absolutely wonderful stories with 50% of them being 4-5star reads. Based on that, I would call this challenge a success since it gave me a new appreciation for books and stories that I have avoided reading for years.

On another note, I took my “out of my comfort zone” challenge in a little bit of a different direction this year. I joined a book club. For many years now, I have always politely declined invitations to join book clubs. I always felt that my schedule didn’t make a lot of room for adding another personal commitment to it. Between work, family and staying healthy (the older I get the more time and energy it takes to stay healthy), I don’t have a lot of free time. Furthermore, I like reading whatever I want and don’t like feeling compelled to read something that does not appeal to me. Once again, I like to rest, relax and enjoy a good story. I don’t want to feel like I’m wasting my precious free time reading something I don’t want to read. I checked out the club’s previous reads and found that almost all of their club reads were books that I had either already read or were currently on my to-read shelf. Alrighty then, it appeared that the club and I had similar reading tastes and preferences. I’ve read four books with them, so far, and have really enjoyed all the club get togethers and discussions. I love talking about books and I especially like discovering new books from people with similar reading preferences.

I have a very dear friend that I’ve known for more than 15yrs who is also my best reading buddy. She and I are both avid readers and love sharing the books we’re reading with each other and are always recommending new books to each other. We’ve always called ourselves “a book club of two”. Since moving to NoCA nearly two years ago, I’ve missed hanging out with her, but we still work together and talk on the phone all the time and are always texting and emailing each other. I miss the one on one though and it’s nice having other women to talk books with.

On that note, I anticipate that 8% of the books I read this year will be book club reads and I will continue to read other books “out of my comfort zone” and am setting a goal of 15% for the “out of my comfort zone” challenge. This will still leave me with another 15% for discovering anything else that doesn’t currently fall into my 2026 challenges. I’m going to leave that open to discover new books.

Happy New Year my GR friends and I hope the new year brings a lot of great books for you to discover and enjoy.

This is a very gentle novel full of simple stories about the inhabitants of Crosby, Maine, and their friends and relatives. Elizabeth Strout has visited this territory many times before in previous works, and in some ways, it is reminiscent of Alexander McCall Smith where nothing happens, charmingly. It doubtless helps to be in the right frame of mind when approaching it as a reader. Like meditation, it is best to let it flow merrily by; the fact that nothing happens can induce feelings of connection or frustration. At the centre of this novel, and all of Elizabeth Stout’s novels, is Olive Kitteridge, an old lady who sits in her chair and, like a friendly spider (I was reminded of Charlotte’s Web), spins her web, weaving and collecting stories of ‘unrecorded lives’. She shares this task with Lucy Barton, the local writer who is living back with her ex-husband William but in love with Bob who is married to Margaret but in love with Lucy too – they don’t consummate this feeling, but they walk together and tell each other everything. Lucy tells Bob, “Olive and I have been telling each other all these stories of unrecorded lives, but what do they mean?... I keep thinking these days about all these people, and people we don’t even know, and their lives are unrecorded. But what does anyone’s life mean?” It is a good question. What is the point? Of a story; of a life? Do they help us to understand our own; recognise similarities and lead to tolerance and understanding? Bob, who visits an old lady and does her shopping, tells her, “It’s just life. That’s all it is. Life.” Olive says she thinks about, “People and the lives they lead. That’s the point.” Do these senior citizens feel less alone when they have someone to talk to? Eleanor Roosevelt famously said, “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” And this novel is all about people. When an event does happen – an abused woman kills her mother and fakes her own death – it is covered with the same light brush strokes, as the author chooses where to direct us: “A week later the new leaves shone in the early afternoon bright sunlight.” The authorial intrusion in a nineteenth-century novel sort of a way (think Charlotte Brontë; George Elliot; Jane Austen; Daphne du Maurier) could be considered comforting or self-aggrandising. She uses the word ‘Oh’ with peculiar emphasis – “Oh Jim Burgess! What are we to do with you?” The word is homely and caring, reflective of a particular dialect, but also epic poetry. One of the novels was Oh William! with echoes of ‘Oh for a muse of fire’ or ‘Oh Fortuna” that may be considered sentimental or pompous. One could see the novel as one of tender consideration that calls for us all to stay connected. “People suffer. They live, they have hope, they even have love, and they still suffer. Everyone does. Those who think they’ve not suffered are lying to themselves.” Or one could see it as a little mawkish and trite, as the final page asserts, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love. If it is love, then it is love.” The choice depends entirely on the reader’s current state of mind and time of life.

The writing style was that of a children's book but with life as an adult content. Characters were drab. The mini-plots were meh and not well developed. Boring read.