- I've read most of Elizabeth Strout's novels over the last few decades and this new one is easily one of her best. It focuses on the intense, complicated relationships that quite ordinary people experience throughout their ordinary lives. Lives that seem comfortable but on many levels are not.
- The key word is 'ordinary'. We're immersed in ordinary communities, watching ordinary families deal with ordinary dramas. Couples split up, marriages begin and end, people argue, new friends are made, accidents happen, and people die. Some from suicide, like the school principal.
- The main character, Artie, is a history teacher at a local high school. He talks to his students about about wars, fascism and the Nazis. Why are there always wars? Can there ever be global peace? He felt he had to convey some optimism to the young students but he knew there could never be peace. The current political environment after Trump's reelection in 2024 is ugly and its negativity ever present.
- He and his wife Evie seem to enjoy a good relationship, despite some tragedies upending their lives, such as the death of their young daughter, and his son Rob's disclosure that Artie is not really his father. Artie doesn’t confront Evie and tell her he knows. He buries it within himself. But he does contemplate suicide.
- He’s starting to keep more secrets, and even to indulge in shoplifting. ‘He had somehow slipped the ties of the world that had been his for almost thirty years...It was a private thing, to be alive. He understood this now’.
- His relationship with his son, despite the biological secret, is deep. Rob relies on his father for advice and their love is strong.
- There are other incidents dotted throughout the novel that enrich it immensely. The book is only 200 pages long and the writing is clear and unpretentious. It's a joy to read.
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