Abide with me, fast falls the eventide
The darkness deepens Lord, with me abide
When other helpers fail and comforts flee
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMO3Lx-Reb4 - Aled Jones.)
Club members certainly found Elizabeth Strout’s Abide with Me (2006) more than a B- Side, despite many members having already read the Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge (2009) and My Name is Lucy Barton (2016). (Strout’s latest novel is Anything is Possible, released this year.)
Ms Strout is an American novelist and short story writer who was born in 1956 and was raised in small towns in Maine and Durham, New Hampshire. Reflecting this background, Abide with Me focuses on the narrow minded community concerns of a small rural town in northern New England in the late 1950s. Interestingly, the story begins very specifically two weeks after Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to the United States in September 1959. There is a general unease about the activities of the Russians and we are told three families have built bomb shelters in their backyards. The more things change...
The book is primarily about Reverend Tyler Caskey and his general unravelling in front of his community in the weeks and months after the death of his wife. It also focuses heartbreakingly on his somewhat neglected daughter, Katherine. The little girl’s suffering and stress are misunderstood and land her in trouble with her teachers at school and Sunday School. Unfortunately for her, a counsellor expert in the theories of Freud is brought in to explain her problems.
These are the bare bones of a story which club members at our May meeting revelled in and talked over for considerable time. A host of complex characters and subplots enrich the main action. Apart from the Russians and Freud, themes touched on include the variety of forms of human love, assisted euthanasia, violence in marriage, the life and times of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (whose writings, Letters and Papers from Prison, smuggled out in defiance of the Gestapo during World War II, are admired by the Minister), the harshness of enduring life in a small rural community in northern New England and the difficulty outsiders have in fitting in. We agreed the characters, even the minor ones, were very well drawn and the dialogue natural and believable and sometimes very funny.
Overall, club members felt the ending to be satisfying, as eventually the community is brought together at last and shown the error of its gossiping ways. We gave it 8-9 out of 10.
Happy Reading!
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In the same way, we hope you will take away from our reviews some pearlers to share with your regular club.
