If you were a fan of Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of linked short stories, then you’ll want to get yourself down to a bookstore tomorrow and pick up The Burgess Boys, her new novel.
Shelf Awareness gave it a great review:
“Almost five years after winning a Pulitzer for the linked stories of Olive Kitteredge, Elizabeth Strout returns to her native Maine in The Burgess Boys, a novel about a family scarred by their father’s death under the wheels of the family car–accidentally set in motion by one of his children playing with the gear shift. The story is only partly set in little Shirley Falls, Maine, with its “accents and chipped plates and bedroom doors too warped to close,” however; the oldest Burgess son, Jim, escapes to a fashionable Brooklyn brownstone and a white-shoe Manhattan law firm, while his younger brother, Bob, tags along to live in a small nearby apartment and grind out briefs in a Legal Aid office. Only Bob’s twin sister, Susan, remains in Maine to raise her son, Zachary, a reclusive teen whose father ran off to discover his heritage in Sweden.”
You can read the full review by Bruce Jacobs here. But we’ll go ahead and give away the ending: “In Strout’s capable hands, words tell a story as true as it gets.” If you just can’t wait until tomorrow, NPR has an excerpt you can read over on their website. We’ll have copies on our shelves tomorrow morning. You can also order online.
BookPeople 