Abide with Me: Book summary and reviews of Abide with Me by Elizabeth Strout

Abide with Me Summary

In her luminous and long-awaited new novel, bestselling author Elizabeth Strout welcomes readers back to the archetypal, lovely landscape of northern New England, where the events of her first novel, Amy and Isabelle, unfolded. In the late 1950s, in the small town of West Annett, Maine, a minister struggles to regain his calling, his family, and his happiness in the wake of profound loss. At the same time, the community he has served so charismatically must come to terms with its own strengths and failings - faith and hypocrisy, loyalty and abandonment - when a dark secret is revealed.

Abide with Me Reviews

"The uplifting ending arrives too easily, but on the whole, Strout has crafted a harrowing meditation of exile on Main Street." - PW.
"The narrator's folksy tone does nothing to enliven this dispiriting story; the overall effect is rather like listening to a slightly cantankerous maiden aunt dispensing local gossip." - Kirkus.

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Abide with Me Reader Reviews

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Rated of 5 by Carol
Very thought provoking
This book touched me deeply. I have read it twice and each time I was moved to tears by Tyler's quiet grief and his congregation's lack of compassion to him and his child. The book was a stark reminder that we cannot know other's pain until we abide with them.

Rated of 5 by Betsy Holland
Hit by a brick.
First timer doing this...
Just finished reading"Abide with Me"
Have never underlined and circled things to come back to.
"The pain beneath his collarbone radiating with such intensity that a nail might have been through him there." I can still feel that pain so intensely myself that I had to talk to someone about this.
So here I am.This is then amazing journey that Elizabeth Strout has set before us all. Cannot quit thinking about some of the questions faith and belief. Highly recommend this to anyone who wants to walk in someone else s shoes and see the complex and not so complex ways we make the decisions we make.A very powerful book. Thank you Miss Strout.

Elizabeth Strout Author Biography

Elizabeth Strout was born in Portland, Maine, and grew up in small towns in Maine and New Hampshire.  From a young age she was drawn to writing things down, keeping notebooks that recorded the quotidian details of her days.  She was also drawn to books, and spent hours of her youth in the local library lingering among the stacks of fiction.  During the summer months of her childhood she played outdoors, either with her brother, or, more often, alone, and this is where she developed her deep and abiding love of the physical world: the seaweed covered rocks along the coast of Maine, and the woods of New Hampshire with its hidden wildflowers.

During her adolescent years, Strout continued writing avidly, having conceived of herself as a writer from early on.  She...

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