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Tell Me Everything, by Elizabeth Strout, Random House, 2024

Full disclosure: Other the 2014 HBO show “Olive Kitteridge,” based on the novel of that name by Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything was this reviewer’s first trip to the fictional Crosby, Maine. It’s unlikely to be my last. 

Tell Me Everything reads like the stories that Lucy Barton shares with Olive throughout the book. Simple. Relatable. Elegant, even.  

There is a loose narrative, but mostly it’s just characters Strout fans will have already met, interacting with one another and living their lives. More importantly, sharing their lives.  

“Tell me everything” is actually uttered more than once as neighbors converse, swapping information about what’s happening in their town. 

At the center of the story is Lucy Barton, the famous writer who has moved to Crosby with her ex-husband, William.  

Her frequent walks with Bob Burgess, the town lawyer, are beautiful set pieces that tie the novel’s plot together. Bob is nearing retirement but is pulled into an unfolding murder investigation involving a lonely son accused of killing his own mother.  

The crime is resolved over the course of the novel, but it’s hardly the main attraction. Lucy and Bob’s relationship is the more interesting plot line. 

Bob is married to Margaret, the town’s Unitarian minister, and while Bob is not unhappy in his marriage, Lucy awakens another part of him. After one of their walks, Strout writes: “Bob felt again that just to be in the company of Lucy gave him a respite from everything.”  

Bob, we’re told by an omniscient plural narrator that Strout employs occasionally — “is not a reflective fellow” — and so he moves through life without dwelling too much on his inner thoughts or acting on his desires. 

Lucy, however, is a storyteller by trade and avocation, and in one of her chats with Olive Kitteridge she introduces the concept of “sin eating,” which she describes as a trait some people have that allows them to unburden others of their sins.  

It is, according to Lucy, why Bob is a successful lawyer. “I see you around town and everyone who has a problem seems to come to you,” Lucy tells Bob, before adding, “don’t think about it.” 

But Strout’s gift is making readers stop and think about lives — from the exciting to the mundane — and that’s what makes this book so appealing.  

Other than the resolution of the murder case, not much happens in Tell Me Everything, and yet there’s a sense that so much is always happening.  

It’s best to give Lucy the last word in another one of her conversations with Olive, after Olive finishes telling her a story about one of her late husband’s aunts: “People and the lives they lead. That’s the point.” —Rob Merrill, AP

Revenge of the Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell, Little, Brown and Company, 2024

It’s been nearly 25 years since Malcolm Gladwell published The Tipping Point, and it’s still easy to catch it being read on airplanes, displayed prominently on executives’ bookshelves, or hear its jargon slipped into conversations. It’s no surprise that a sequel was the next logical step. 

In Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering, Gladwell is rehashing and rebuilding on the concepts that he first wrote about in 2000. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it wasn’t really necessary either. 

Gladwell is revisiting the concept of “social epidemics” and how little things could make a big difference. In his latest book, he’s just as concerned about the underside of the tipping point, or what he calls an “attempt to do a forensic investigation of social epidemics.” 

The book’s style is familiar to anyone who has followed Gladwell’s work over the years: an engaging but whiplash-inducing tour of examples ranging from bank robberies in Los Angeles to the opioid epidemic. And it makes sense that a book looking at social epidemics would also look at the COVID-19 pandemic. 

A key part of Gladwell’s thesis in Revenge looks at what he calls the overstory — small-area variations that distinguish one area or community from another and affect the people who live there. It’s what may explain differences in Medicare fraud rates among communities, or vaccination rates among types of schools. 

Revenge is entertaining, but it’s essentially fan service for readers who enjoyed The Tipping Point. The sequel provides more of the same: nuggets of history and jargon that they soak up on airplanes and toss around during conference table conversations.

—Andrew DeMillo, AP