Anything Is Possible

A Novel

By: Elizabeth Strout

Narrated by: Kimberly Farr

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An unforgettable cast of small-town characters copes with love and loss in this “compulsively readable” (San Francisco Chronicle) novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Olive Kitteridge and My Name is Lucy Barton

“This book, this writer, are magnificent.”—Ann Patchett

WINNER OF THE STORY PRIZE • ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, People, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Newsday, The Seattle Times, Esquire, The Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly

In Anything Is Possible, Elizabeth Strout explores the whole range of human emotion through the intimate dramas of people struggling to understand themselves and others. Here are two sisters: One trades self-respect for a wealthy husband while the other finds in the pages of a book a kindred spirit who changes her life. A grown daughter longs for mother love even as she comes to accept her mother’s happiness in a foreign country. And Lucy Barton returns to visit her siblings after seventeen years of absence.

Reverberating with the deep bonds of family, and the hope that comes with reconciliation, Anything Is Possible “confirms Strout as one of our most grace-filled, and graceful, writers” (The Boston Globe).

Elizabeth Stroud is wonderful!

I loved Olive Kitteridge; I loved My Name is Lucy Barton; and I loved this book. The characters are so well developed, yet there isn't an extra word. I especially enjoy the interrelatedness of the individual stories.

This book is the reason to read Lucy Barton

I loved my first book by Elizabeth Strout; Olive Kitteredge has a permanent place in my host of imaginary companions, who follow me around a commenting on my life. But Lucy Barton, my second read, was disappointing.

And then, I learned what Lucy Barton was preparing me for. The women, and some sensitive men, of Amgash, Illinois come to life in these loosely woven stories. They are flawed, doubting, hoping, and often (but not always) redeemed. Strout believes in the ripple effects of a benevolent gaze, but she is not shallow or trite in demonstrating this.

This is a quiet book for a rainy afternoon or for recovering from something that has exhausted the spirit. It is suitable for reading after the midterm election is over--whether your side won or lost, Strout's stories of small town life will remind you of how, and why, to repair the fragile threads that make a family or community. It's not an adventure story or a who-dunnit. It's not a Pollyanna story of good people doing good deeds and saving the world. But it is believable, and there is grace in these people.

Strout captures the rural Illinois that I know--the sweltering heat of summer, the knife-edge fragility of a family farm, the easy cruelty of tiny town gossip, the equally easy generosity of neighbors, the stands of oak, the endless miles of genetically-engineered corn and soybeans, the resistance to change and the inevitable inroads that it makes in our lives, anyway. There are shafts of light amidst the dark green overgrowth that lines footpaths in town that has outlasted its economic reason to exist. My heart wants to go there, too, to rest only slightly uneasy while fireflies dance quietly in the grass.

Interesting group of people to spend time with

So much better than My Name is Lucy Barton.

Strait dies such a great job of creating a community...

It was so good, I’d like to listen to it all over again!

I highly recommend this book. Great stories, great insight into the human condition. It is a book of short stories all interwoven.

Elizabeth Strout is a national treasure

Very few authors can grab me from the very first page, but Strout does it every time.
Excellent book.