Anything Is Possible

Staff Top Fives 2018

Our favorite books of the year.

Elizabeth Strout is my favorite contemporary author, a writer of “perfect” fiction, with every word exquisitely chosen and every feeling coursing with authenticity and pathos. And the characters? Complex, wonderful, and frustrating. A remarkable sequel to My Name Is Lucy Barton. Recommended By Peter N., Powells.com

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An unforgettable cast of small-town characters copes with love and loss in this new work of fiction by #1 bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout.

Winner of The Story Prize • A Washington Post and New York Times Notable Book • One of USA Today’s top 10 books of the year

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.

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.

“If you miss the charmingly eccentric and completely relatable characters from Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout’s best-selling My Name Is Lucy Barton, you’ll be happily reunited with them in Strout’s smart and soulful Anything Is Possible.” Elle

“While we recommend everything by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer — like, say her recent book My Name Is Lucy Barton — this novel, which explores life’s complexities through interconnected stores, stands on its own....It’s a joy to read a modern master doing her thing.” Marie Claire

“Readers who loved My Name Is Lucy Barton...are in for a real treat....Strout is a master of the story cycle form....She paints cumulative portraits of the heartache and soul of small-town America by giving each of her characters a turn under her sympathetic spotlight.” NPR

“These stories return Strout to the core of what she does more magnanimously than anyone else.” The Washington Post

“In this wise and accomplished book, pain and healing exist in perpetual dependence, like feuding siblings.” The Wall Street Journal

“When Elizabeth Strout is on her game, is there anybody better?...This is a generous, wry book about everyday lives, and Strout crawls so far inside her characters you feel you inhabit them....This is a book that earns its title. Try reading it without tears, or wonder.” USA Today (four stars)

Elizabeth Strout is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Olive Kitteridge; the #1 New York Times bestseller My Name Is Lucy Barton; The Burgess Boys, a New York Times bestseller; Abide with Me, a national bestseller and Book Sense pick; and Amy and Isabelle, which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in England. Her short stories have been published in a number of magazines, including The New Yorker and O: The Oprah Magazine. Elizabeth Strout lives in New York City.