Tell Me Everything

“The story was one that Olive had been reflecting on with more and more frequency, and she thought—as people often do—that if her story could be told to a writer, maybe it could be used in a book one day.”

Early in the novel, Olive establishes rapport with Lucy, and they share stories throughout the novel that amplify the themes in the book and probe big, existential questions. In this quote, Elizabeth Strout offers an inside joke among writers, who are often approached with a story that someone thinks needs to be told. The aside “as people often do” also offers a clue to the narrator’s characteristics, which shape the narration.

“Here is an example of their friendship: Bob had become a (secret) smoker again. After having smoked for much of his life, he had quit when he met Margaret, now almost fifteen years ago, but during the pandemic he started to smoke (secretly) one cigarette a day, and then it went to two. Lucy knew this about him, Margaret did not. That’s all. It was innocent, because both Bob and Lucy were—in a strange, indefinable way—innocent people.”

This quote raises the specter of the pandemic and the changes that it wrought in people’s everyday lives in ways that still resonate. The smoking is a metaphor for the secrets between two people in a marriage. It connects to the ghosts in the marriage motif and the theme of The Ebb and Flow of True Connection, which illustrate Bob’s isolation from Margaret, an issue that Strout probes throughout the book.

“She spoke with great authority and believability, and the girls watched her with terrified eyes. Very specific detail was given. A young woman’s dress would be described, a striped dress that had a wrap-around waistband—and the man got the young woman into his car by saying that her mother had been in an accident and he was going to take her to her mother. Diana told of the kinds of back roads these women were driven on until they were taken far into the woods and then forced to get out of the car.”

Diana’s playground stories are so specific that adult Susan can see in them what young Susan couldn’t; they were based on abuse and trauma in Diana’s background, and she is using storytelling to try to process trauma. Instead of directly revealing the details about Diana’s abuse, Strout first approaches it from this angle, which is characteristic of her writing—she uses story and anecdote to illustrate her points rather than declare them straight out. Here, she uses Susan’s anecdote to establish that Diana was abused as a child without saying it directly.

“Bob says, ‘It’s his role thing. She’s not a child.’

Margaret appeared to think about this. ‘No, but she is childlike.’ Margaret added, turning onto her back, ‘She’s an artist, that’s how they are.’”

Bob comments on how William infantilizes Lucy, but Margaret’s response is not what he expects. While Bob can see how it bothers Lucy, Margaret sees it as a relationship dynamic fueled by Lucy’s status as an artist. The novel revisits Margaret’s opinion that artists are “childlike” later with the introduction of painter Matt Beach.

“Margaret continued to be busy with her church. She came home one Friday and said, ‘Avery Mason is getting himself on the board of the church. Because Ted Wiley died and there’s been that opening—Well, it turns out that Avery Mason has been angling for the position and he’d going to get it.’

Bob barely gave this a thought—it did not seem to him that Margaret thought about it much either. ‘You mean the guy who sleeps through every service?’ Bob asked, and Margaret shrugged and said, ‘The very one.’

But Avery Mason, without Bob or Margaret knowing it yet, was getting ready to threaten Margaret’s job.”

One theme that Bob is preoccupied with throughout the novel is The Ebb and Flow of True Connection. He illustrates the disconnect between himself and Margaret through their respective preoccupations—while Margaret is very busy with her job and church business, Bob is preoccupied with Lucy. In this passage, the narrator also directly addresses the reader, sharing hints this time about future events in the novel. By doing so, Strout creates dramatic irony, where the reader knows that something is coming to upset Bob and Margaret’s status quo, but they do not.

“‘I get that.’

‘I know you do.’ And he did. He understood the situation this woman was in. He felt the sadness of it as though an outgoing tide moved slowly through him.”

Throughout the novel, one of the ways that Strout indicates moments of The Ebb and Flow of True Connection is through the characters “getting it.” They often use the expression to show that they truly are listening and understanding. Lucy and Bob use it a lot with each other. Here, Bob also shows his characteristic empathetic nature with the deep connection he feels for Pam. He uses the metaphor of a tide to represent something elemental and demonstrate the power of this movement of emotion.

“‘You guys will work that out,’ Bob said, but he thought: I am lying to Jim. I have no idea if he will work it out with Larry. And I have no idea if he feels alone.”

Bob’s relationship with his brother Jim is complicated—they are intimately close, and yet there is always a distance between them imposed by their father’s death. Here, Bob centers this distance in a specific conversation with Jim, in which he placates his brother even as he doubts the truth of what he is saying. He then uses this moment to consider Jim’s overall relationship with Larry and, further, to reflect on whether his brother “feels alone.” Strout consistently wraps the small events of the novel around the bigger questions of life and the persistent loneliness humans feel.

“We might want to take a moment to wonder who this Gloria Beach woman was. But the full story of Gloria Beach remains shrouded in mystery. There are some ‘facts’ as she recorded them in a journal—in two notebooks she kept at various points in her life, a journal that only her son Matthew had access to.”

This quote illustrates Strout’s continued thematic examination of The Importance of Perspective in Storytelling throughout the novel. The story of Gloria Beach is tragic but shifts depending on who is telling it. Strout puts “facts” in quotes to remind that it is still Gloria’s point of view. She brings the narrator back in by using “we.” The question of who Gloria is is complex and evolves throughout the narrative.

“He kept staring at them: They were sort of abstract, the women’s faces not done with realism, the bodies not done with realism, but they were, to Bob, stunning. He looked carefully and understood that a variety of brushstrokes had been used, and the colors were subtle yet astonishing. ‘Where did you learn to do this?’ The room smelled of oil paint and turpentine and seemed to have a freshness that the rest of the house so distinctly did not.”

Lucy and Olive spend a lot of time considering the concept of “unrecorded lives.” With Matt’s life, Strout offers a real-life example, illustrating how these “unrecorded lives” are still rich and full of beauty, in contrast to the time in which the novel is set, in which people are increasingly interested in recording and documenting their lives online. Bob also notes how the room had a “freshness.” While he is thinking about the scent, it also indicates a freshness of perspective.

“But it felt like we were talking, it’s hard to explain. I mean, when I looked out the window and saw how swollen the rivers and inlets were with all the rain, I felt that he was noticing this too, and it was sort of like we commented on these swollen waters together. That kind of thing. And then, Olive—It was so strange I thought: I love him! Because I did.”

This quote highlights why people see Lucy as special—she is open to connection with others. Several characters throughout the novel comment on the fact that when Lucy is listening, she is truly listening and connected. Like Bob, who feels empathy for Pam and moves through him like a wave, Lucy feels a connection with the stranger through their attention and connection to the water. This gives an elemental quality to their connection.

“Lucy gave a small shrug. And then it came to Olive; she had an understanding. She said, ‘Lucy, you’re a lonely little thing.’

Lucy looked up at her quickly. She said, ‘Who is not lonely, Olive? Show me one person.”

Strout illustrates The Ebb and Flow of Connection in the interactions between Lucy and Olive, both in their relationship and in their discussions. As Lucy puts it, their stories are about love and loneliness, and Strout develops this theme partly by showing the two women’s loneliness and how, paradoxically, that creates a connection between them.

“But here was the thing: That day, as a small child, Bob had stared out the window of the car, he was in the backseat with Susie, and he had stared at the little girl who was standing on the porch of this Reverend Caskey’s house next to her father. He had stared and stared at her, and she had stared at him. And he had never, ever forgotten her. It was Katherine Caskey. And it was during the pandemic, as they were eating outside one evening in Crosby with Katherine’s husband and William and Lucy, and also with Margaret, that Bob and Katherine put this together. She had never forgotten him either!”

These events of Bob’s childhood, both the trauma of his father’s death and this moment of intense connection with another child, shaped Bob’s life. It shows how connection, no matter how fleeting, can be lasting. This memory, first introduced in The Burgess Boys, stays with Bob over time.

“Why do I feel so bad for your brother? […] The fact that he said that every day at school he would think, I’m going to go home and tell her, meaning your mother. Today I am going to do that. Starting at the age of eight, Bob. Your brother kept thinking: Today I am going to tell her, today I am going to confess. And then he couldn’t. And as time went by he couldn’t do it even more, and meanwhile your mother was so loving to you because she thought you had done it, and as this was confusing to the small boy Jim, maybe he thought he wouldn’t be believed. And then in college, and then at Harvard Law School, he still kept thinking, I’m going to tell her. […] Oh Bob. What a tortured way to live. No wonder he had to become one of the best defense attorneys in this country. He thought of himself as a criminal.”

Lucy offers Bob a completely different perspective on Jim’s bullying behavior. With this fresh point of view, Bob can understand what Lucy has always recognized about Jim: His bullying is because he has felt the weight of his lie his entire life. With this example, Strout highlights The Importance of Perspective in Storytelling—when someone else tells Jim’s life story, a whole new story emerges that allows Bob to feel compassion for Jim.

“The truth is, even in their small church in Crosby there was often a very slight sense of unease for Bob as he watched from the third-row pew, his wife standing before the congregation in her long white robe and speaking to them all about Love and Charity and all the other stuff. His unease, he realized, was because there was a certain manner that overtook her at such times, though he would be hard-pressed to say exactly what it was. But sometimes he had the image of a child playing dress-up and being excited by her importance. So it wasn’t always easy for Bob to watch. But people loved her. Bob loved her.”

Throughout the novel, Bob’s relationship with Margaret changes and evolves, highlighting the theme of The Ebb and Flow of True Connection. For most of the novel, he feels distance from her and sometimes a sense of “unease” or even distaste. One way in which this distaste manifests is when he watches Margaret give her sermons. He senses something inauthentic in her performance, and only when Margaret has overcome this later in the novel does Bob begin to feel closer to her again.

“Lucy waved to Bob from where she stood waiting by the wooden fence in the parking lot, and he thought there was an innocence to her that she probably did not understand about herself. As she got out of his car and walked toward her, the sight of her standing there made something gold-colored flicker inside him; it was joy.—And then he had to stop walking, because—at that precise moment—he understood exactly how much he loved her.”

Bob’s infatuation with Lucy is partly because of the innocence that he senses in her, which endears her to him. Throughout the novel, he begins to use gold imagery to describe Lucy and how she makes him feel. Bob feels the joy of being able to connect with Lucy. As Bob is a character who is usually the “sin-eater,” it is a relief to him to have someone who doesn’t add to that. Lucy instead offers him real connection and understanding.

“He stopped walking, and so did she. ‘Lucy, what exactly is it you like so much about these dandelions?’ She said, ‘Well, they’re yellow, and they grow in green grass, and the combination of the green and the yellow—Oh, I just love it!’ He stood looking at the area where the dandelions grew, and then he saw what she meant: their spots of yellow in the green. ‘Got it,’ he said. And they kept walking.”

With Lucy’s love of the dandelions, she pulls Bob out of his problems and into the physical world. Her love of the dandelions also illustrates how Lucy is different from most people, something that the characters all seem to recognize. With the bold and basic imagery of the yellow on green, Strout creates a visual that describes Lucy’s ability to see the simple joys of life and her ability to get Bob to see it, also.

“But after that latest walk, Bob thought of Lucy almost constantly. He kept going over their talk, trying to remember it accurately and worried that he did not. She became a golden blur to him. But she had said she envied someone her age who could just leave their life? What did that mean? She had said, I hear you. She had said, I hear what you’re saying. I heard what you said.

And who—who who who in this whole entire world—does not want to be heard?”

Bob finally sees his attraction to Lucy more clearly—she listens to him in a way that no one else in his life does. At this point, Bob realizes that his love for Lucy is really about the connection she offers him. Paradoxically, this is the point at which he stops seeing Lucy as clearly; she becomes a “golden blur” to him.

“After Helen died—we are talking about the moment she stopped breathing and then when her body was taken from the house—after this transpired, what happened to Jim was this: He was silently catapulted into an entirely new country, one that he had never known existed, and it was a country of quietness and solitariness in a way that he could not—quite seriously—believe. A terrible silence seemed to surround him, he could not feel himself fully present in the world, even as he dealt with Helen’s friends and with the occasional man who said, Let’s have lunch—throughout this, Jim understood that he had been exiled to a place that was, before, unimaginable to him. And yet it was now where he lived.”

Although Jim is not one of the main characters of the novel, he experiences his arc through Helen’s death and Larry’s injury. Strout uses the imagery of a new country as a way of illustrating the very immediate and complete nature of Jim’s dislocation. The mentions of exile and it being where he now “lived” emphasize the lasting nature of his position and his sense that he will never be able to get back to where he was.

“And then Diana turned around and saw him, she stopped walking and so did Bob, and Bob—for some reason—could not look away from her and could not smile either. They were caught in a look. And then—this was extraordinary—Bob watched as her face changed. It would be hard for him to describe this later, but her face quickly yet subtly became a different face. Her eyes seemed to recede and they had what appeared to be almost a film over them, they were gone in a way, and her skull appeared to become more apparent. Her mouth went down, but mainly it was her eyes: she had become a different person.”

Bob experiences a moment of connection with Diana in the airport just before she dies by suicide. In this moment, he sees how every person has multiple facets and what they hide from others. Strout uses a concrete physical description of Diana’s face to emphasize this inner change—the changes to her eyes and even her skull mark the shift as dramatic and fundamental.

“‘Bob, I’m not doing so well.’

‘That means you’re normal,’ Bob said, standing up and going back inside with Matt.

‘I’m not normal,’ Matt said.

‘Well, you’re at least a lot more normal than you think you are,’ Bob told him.”

Matt’s character arc throughout the novel is dramatic, even as he is not a main character. The novel reveals his rich inner life, developing extraordinary skills as a painter. However, Matt is an example of Lucy and Olive’s “unrecorded lives” because no one knows about it until Bob becomes a part of his life. Because of his isolation, Matt doesn’t know what “normal” is. One of the responsibilities Bob assumes when he takes Matt’s case is to bring him into the world and connect him with others.

“‘But, Olive, here is my question to you. Okay, so Addie’s life was one more unrecorded life, but what was the point of it? What was the point of her life, Olive?’

Olive sat back and watched Lucy. Lucy seemed quite distressed. ‘Lucy Barton, are you asking me what the point was of this young woman’s life? What is the point of anyone’s life?’

Lucy looked at her. ‘Well. Yeah. What is the point of anyone’s life?’”

Lucy and Olive’s sessions have been building slowly toward this question, one of existential importance. Strout uses these storytelling sessions to explore these issues specifically through Olive’s and Lucy’s lenses. While they are very different characters, Lucy and Olive are both characteristically forthright. They seriously consider big questions and are comfortable with the ambiguity that these questions, which have no answer, possess.

“‘Just so you know, it’s not as bad as you think it is.’ Matt said this as he took the charcoal stick in his hand.

‘Yeah, it is,’ Bob said.

‘It’s not, though’ Matt glanced up, his hand working. ‘You know why? Because you’re still Bob Burgess. Nothing can take that away.’”

Matt’s relationship with Bob has been transformative for Matt, but it also gives Bob something. As the narrator commented at the beginning of the novel, Bob isn’t very self-aware, and statements like Matt’s often confuse him. However, his comment also shows Matt’s insightfulness, with his realization that what makes Bob Bob is elemental and cannot be changed.

“William was wearing a red tie against a white shirt, and the sight of that tie somehow killed Bob. It just killed him. William had dressed up for his wedding.”

Throughout the novel, Bob shows his compassion and sensitivity to those around him. He even extends this compassion to characters like William, who Bob feels ambivalent about. Strout uses the detail of the red tie to illustrate what Bob finds so sweet—it conveys the effort that William has put toward the wedding.