Anything is Possible

Strout, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241248795 ISBN 13: 9780241248799

Publisher: Penguin, 2018

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2017
Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2018

An unforgettable cast of small-town characters copes with love and loss from the No. 1 New York Times bestselling and Man Booker long-listed author of My Name is Lucy Barton

Recalling Olive Kitteridge in its richness, structure, and complexity, Anything Is Possible explores the whole range of human emotion through the intimate dramas of people struggling to understand themselves and others. Anything is Possible tells the story of the inhabitants of rural, dusty Amgash, Illinois, the hometown of Lucy Barton, a successful New York writer who finally returns, after seventeen years of absence, to visit the siblings she left behind.

Reverberating with the deep bonds of family, and the hope that comes with reconciliation, Anything Is Possible again underscores Elizabeth Strout's place as one of America's most respected and cherished authors.

Review:

It's hard to believe that a year after the astonishing My Name Is Lucy Barton Elizabeth Strout could bring us another book that is by every measure its equal, but what Strout proves to us again and again is that where she's concerned, anything is possible. This book, this writer, are magnificent. (Ann Patchett, No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of 'Commonwealth')

This is a shimmering masterpiece of a book...Strout is a brilliant chronicler of the ambiguity and delicacy of the human condition. Anything is Possible is a wise, stunning novel (Observer)

The words appear on the page as if breathed there (Sunday Telegraph)

Anything is Possible is wonderfully readable because Strout really can write you into a world until you feel you are there with her, in that house, that life, that little Podunk of a place (The Times)

Strout's compassion for her fellow creatures, as these anguished, lean stories prove, is as keen as a whip and all the more painful for it (Guardian)

The work of Elizabeth Strout suggests that she pays a similar quality of unseparate attention to life, which she - not passively, but actively - takes in, listening to, looking into it, reflecting up on and freeing it once more, remade, in beautifully placed words, onto the page to live again for us, her fortunate readers (Daily Telegraph)

Anything is Possible is absolutely wonderful. Here is a writer at the peak of her powers: compassionate, profoundly observant, laser-cut diamond brilliant (Literary Review)

Anything Is Possible confirms Strout as one of our most grace-filled, and graceful, writers (Boston Globe)

There is immense humanity in Strout's writing....her masterful economy of prose creates a rich tapestry infused with emotional wisdom...Anything is Possible is a masterpiece (Sunday Express)

A quietly gripping deception of some of the ordinary, messy, interwoven lives that Lucy and her mother discussed in the earlier book (Radio Times)

From the Back Cover:

An unforgettable cast of small-town characters copes with love and loss from the NO. 1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AND MAN BOOKER LONG-LISTED AUTHOR OF MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON

Anything is Possible tells the story of the inhabitants of rural, dusty Amgash, Illinois, the hometown of Lucy Barton, a successful New York writer who finally returns, after seventeen years of absence, to visit the siblings she left behind.

Reverberating with the deep bonds of family, and the hope that comes with reconciliation, Anything Is Possible again underscores Elizabeth Strout's place as one of America's most respected and cherished authors.

'Writing of this quality comes from an attention to reality so exact that it goes beyond a skill and becomes a virtue' Hilary Mantel on My Name is Lucy Barton

'One of the best writers in America' Sunday Times on My Name is Lucy Barton

'Glorious, tender, true. Read it' Sunday Telegraph on My Name is Lucy Barton