Tell me Everything - Elizabeth Strout

Tell Me Everything is a powerful and compassionate novel by Elizabeth Strout, winner of the Books Are My Bag Fiction Award 2025, and a testament to the author’s extraordinary ability to illuminate ordinary lives with profound emotional depth.

Set in autumnal Maine, the story follows town lawyer Bob Burgess, who becomes entangled in a disturbing murder case while forming an unexpected and deeply meaningful friendship with celebrated writer Lucy Barton, who lives quietly by the sea. As they share conversations about their pasts, regrets, and unrealized hopes, their bond becomes a source of solace and understanding.

Lucy, in turn, forges a connection with Olive Kitteridge, one of Crosby’s most enduring figures, now living in a retirement community. In long afternoons spent together, Lucy and Olive exchange stories of people they have known—lives that were never recorded, yet rich with meaning. Through these shared memories, forgotten lives are brought vividly back into existence.

With sensitivity, wisdom, and emotional clarity, Strout weaves a narrative that explores how storytelling, love, and human connection sustain us through life’s quiet struggles.

Main Themes of the Book

• Human connection and emotional intimacy
• Memory, storytelling, and “unrecorded lives”
• Friendship, aging, and reflection
• Love in its many forms

Reasons to Choose the Book from the Publisher

• Written by an internationally acclaimed literary author
• Winner of a major contemporary fiction award
• Features beloved characters from the Strout universe
• Ideal for readers of thoughtful, character-driven fiction

Tell Me Everything is a deeply humane and resonant novel that captures the beauty of shared stories and the quiet power of relationships. With empathy, insight, and graceful prose, Elizabeth Strout reminds us that love—however it appears—is what ultimately keeps us afloat.