Abide With Me
Published on 4. June 2007
Book
Paperback/Softback
304 pages
978-0-7434-6228-0 (ISBN)
Description
From the Man Booker Prize longlisted author of My Name is Lucy Barton
Katherine is only five-years-old. Struck dumb with grief at her mother's death, it is down to her father, the heartbroken minister Tyler Caskey, to bring his daughter out of silence she has observed in the wake of the family's tragedy. But Tyler Caskey is barely surviving himself. His cold, church-assigned home is colder still since Lauren's death, and he struggles to find the right words for his sermons; struggles to be a leader to his congregation when he himself is lost. When Katherine's schoolteacher calls to discuss his daughter's anti-social behaviour, it sparks a chain of events that begins to tear down Tyler's defences. The small-town rumour-mill has much to make of Katherine's odd behaviour, and even more to say about Tyler's relationship with his housekeeper, Connie Hatch. And in Tyler's darkest hour, a startling discovery will test his congregation's humanity - and his own will to endure the kinds of trials that sooner or later test us all. From the Orange Prize-shortlisted author of Amy & Isabelle, this is a startlingly beautiful novel about love and abandonment, faith and hypocrisy; and the peril of family secrets...
Katherine is only five-years-old. Struck dumb with grief at her mother's death, it is down to her father, the heartbroken minister Tyler Caskey, to bring his daughter out of silence she has observed in the wake of the family's tragedy. But Tyler Caskey is barely surviving himself. His cold, church-assigned home is colder still since Lauren's death, and he struggles to find the right words for his sermons; struggles to be a leader to his congregation when he himself is lost. When Katherine's schoolteacher calls to discuss his daughter's anti-social behaviour, it sparks a chain of events that begins to tear down Tyler's defences. The small-town rumour-mill has much to make of Katherine's odd behaviour, and even more to say about Tyler's relationship with his housekeeper, Connie Hatch. And in Tyler's darkest hour, a startling discovery will test his congregation's humanity - and his own will to endure the kinds of trials that sooner or later test us all. From the Orange Prize-shortlisted author of Amy & Isabelle, this is a startlingly beautiful novel about love and abandonment, faith and hypocrisy; and the peril of family secrets...
Reviews / Votes
'As perfect a novel as you will ever read . . . So astonishingly good that I shall be reading it once a year for the foreseeable future and very probably for the rest of my life' * Evening Standard on Olive Kitteridge * 'Strout animates the ordinary with astonishing force' * The New Yorker on Olive Kitteridge * 'Masterfully wrought' * Vanity Fair on Olive Kitteridge * 'Strout has a wonderful ability to turn a phrase...[these] pages hold what life puts in: experience, joy, grief, and the sometimes-painful journey to love' * Observer on Olive Kitteridge * 'I am deeply impressed. Writing of this quality comes from a commitment to listening, from a perfect attunement to the human condition, from an attention to reality so exact that it goes beyond a skill and becomes a virtue. I have never read her before and I knew within a few sentences that here was an artist to value and respect' -- Hillary Mantel on My Name is Lucy Barton 'Strout's best novel yet' -- Ann Pachett on My Name is Lucy Barton 'An exquisite novel... in its careful words and vibrating silences, My Name Is Lucy Barton offers us a rare wealth of emotion, from darkest suffering to - 'I was so happy. Oh, I was happy' - simple joy' * Claire Messud, New York Times Book Review on My Name is Lucy Barton * 'So good I got goosebumps... a masterly novel of family ties by one of America's finest writers' * Sunday Times on My Name is Lucy Barton * 'My Name is Lucy Barton confirms Strout as a powerful storyteller immersed in the nuances of human relationships... Deeply affecting novel...visceral and heartbreaking...If she hadn't already won the Pulitzer for Olive Kitteridge this new novel would surely be a contender' * Observer on My Name is Lucy Barton * 'Hypnotic...yielding a glut of profoundly human truths to do with flight, memory and longing' * Mail on Sunday on My Name is Lucy Barton * 'This is a book you'll want to return to again and again and again' * Irish Independent on My Name is Lucy Barton * 'Slim and spectacular...My Name Is Lucy Barton is smart and cagey in every way. It is both a book of withholdings and a book of great openness and wisdom. It starts with the clean, solid structure and narrative distance of a fairy tale yet becomes more intimate and improvisational, coming close at times to the rawness of autofiction by writers such as Karl Ove Knausgaard and Rachel Cusk. Strout is playing with form here, with ways to get at a story, yet nothing is tentative or haphazard. She is in supreme and magnificent command of this novel at all times....' * Washington Post on My Name is Lucy Barton * 'My Name Is Lucy Barton is a short novel about love, particularly the complicated love between mothers and daughters... It evokes these connections in a style so spare, so pure and so profound the book almost seems to be a kind of scripture or sutra, if a very down-to-earth and unpretentious one' * Newsday on My Name is Lucy Barton * 'Her concise writing is a masterclass in deceptive simplicity...Strout writes with an exacting rhythm, with each word and clause perfectly placed and weighted and each sentence as clear and bracing as grapefruit. It's a small masterpiece' * Daily Mail on My Name is Lucy Barton * 'This short, simple, quiet novel wriggles its way right into your heart and stays there' * Red on My Name is Lucy Barton * 'A beautifully taut novel' * Guardian on My Name is Lucy Barton * 'Agleam with extraordinary psychological insights...delicate, tender but ruthless reveries' * Sunday Express on My Name is Lucy Barton * 'An eerie, compelling novel, its deceptively simple language is a 'slight rush of words' which hold much more than they seem capable of containing...This novel is about the need to create a story we can live with when the real story cannot be told...' * Financial Times on My Name is Lucy Barton * 'Strout uses a different voice herself in this novel: a spare simple one, elegiac in tone that sometimes brings to mind Joan Didion's' * The Tablet on My Name is Lucy Barton * 'An exquisitely written story...a brutally honest, absorbing and emotive read' * Catholic Universe on My Name is Lucy Barton * 'This is a glorious novel, deft, tender and true. Read it' * Sunday Telegraph on My Name is Lucy Barton * 'Honest, intimate and ultimately unforgettable' * Stylist on My Name is Lucy Barton * 'Strout's prose propels the story forward with moments of startlingly poetic clarity.' * The New Yorker on The Burgess Boys * 'One of those rare, invigorating books that take an apparently familiar world and peer into it with ruthless intimacy, revealing a strange and startling place.' * The New York Times Book Review on Amy & Isabelle * 'A novel of shining integrity and humour' -- Alice Munro on Amy and IsabelleMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-7434-6228-0 (9780743462280)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Elizabeth Strout
Abide With Me
E-Book
04/2013
1st Edition
Simon + Schuster LLC
€7.73
Available for download
Person
Elizabeth Strout's tenure as a lawyer (six months) was slightly longer than her career as a stand-up comedian (one night). She has also worked as a bartender, waitress and piano player at bars across the USA. She now teaches literature in New York, where she lives with her husband and daughter.