Anything Is Possible

 

Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout

Amgash #2

Fiction

2017

Finished on June 22, 2025

Rating: 3/5 (Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

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.

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. The janitor at the local school has his faith tested in an encounter with an isolated man he has come to help; a grown daughter longs for mother love even as she comes to accept her mother's happiness in a foreign country; and the adult Lucy Barton (the heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton, the author's celebrated New York Times bestseller) returns to visit her siblings after seventeen years of absence.

This is the second collection of short stories I've read this month, and I'm not a big fan of the genre, so I'm not surprised that I didn't love Anything Is Possible. The stories are more interconnected than those of Table for Two (Amor Towles), and some of the characters are familiar from my reading of My Name Is Lucy Barton, but the book is not one of my favorites by Elizabeth Strout. I struggled to keep track of the characters' relationships with one another as they overlap from chapter to chapter. Plus, the central theme to Strout's stories is shame and regret, and many involve mothers who leave their families. Thus, the overall tone is bleak and gloomy. The writing, however, is marvelous, so I was never tempted to stop reading. Anything Is Possible is best read right after My Name Is Lucy Barton, perhaps with a pen & pad in hand.