ALL THE PERFECT DAYS, sweet summertime story to get immersed in

ALL THE PERFECT DAYS
MICHAEL THOMPSON
Sourcebooks Landmark (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, availble now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Family GP Charlie Knight fears life is passing him by. He’s in his late thirties, and treading water as a family doctor in the same small town he grew up in.

Just as he’s planning his escape, something changes. He develops a gift, an extraordinary insight for any doctor: a sense of exactly how many days his patients have left to live.

But in a country town like Marwick, his patients are his friends. His own family. The people he grew up with, and the girl he still loves.

And Charlie discovers this gift may not be a gift at all.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: NOT A ROM-COM. Do not look at the cover illustration and think it's going to be a sweet little romp as the MC gets a second chance at Luuuv. (That is part of what happens, but honestly not as much as the visuals suggest.) Oh, and to be honest, calling a thirtyish woman "the girl he still loves" is not a great choice, copywriting department.

What kept me reading this story was Charlie's mildly perplexed attitude towards his newfound ability to "see" how long a person has left to live. What a Burnsian gift:

Oh, would some Power the gift give us
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us,
And foolish notion:
What airs in dress and gait would leave us,
And even devotion!...from To a Louse

...for a doctor to discover! It could at first glance seem like a gift...but quite soon it would naturally become a burden.

Bearing that burden is a man we don't really get to know, but more know about. We have no access to his...or anyone else's...thoughts, we're in a third-person close narrative style so we are more or less the camera in the movie of Charlie's life. I went back and forth on this choice, does it work does it help me "get" the story...it does and it doesn't. It's a choice that makes the story outside us, and them; it's a story that is about a place we do not feel we belong to while really caring about the guy showing us around.

No one else gets much attention, really. Ideas are introduced but not explored any more than the not-Charlie characters are. I'm not all the way in sympathy with that choice because of the nature of Charlie's "gift." A bit more about the people whose lives he senses pretty clearly the ends of might've increased my investment in them and the story.

I did get invested, however, as I resonate with Charlie's newfound ability to see what is not obvious. I quite liked his slightly befuddled response to it. I liked Charlie, and I was glad to sped time with him. As it is told, it felt to me like something from the midcentury of US or UK middlebrow fiction.

That is an honest compliment, as those kinds of stories are able to convey the essential goodness in most people. Everyone in this story, no matter how incomplete their characters felt to me, was an essentially well-meaning person (if sometimes slightly lost).

It's a welcome, and welcoming, place to be.

TELL ME EVERYTHING, the familiar salutation in Italian marking you out as special to the speaker

TELL ME EVERYTHING
ELIZABETH STROUT
Random House (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$16.99 trade paper, $14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: From Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout comes a hopeful, healing novel about new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world.

With her “extraordinary capacity for radical empathy” (The Boston Globe), remarkable insight into the human condition, and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more—as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?”

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known—“unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them—reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.

Brimming with empathy and pathos, Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.”

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Well, here we are...next in a series of books about people I care less about than I probably am safe admitting to publicly. Lucy Barton's fans are legion, and they looove her for being her mildly chaotic self. I mean, they've stuck by her despite her ongoing friendship with her truly toxic, lightly pathetic first husband! That would get a flesh-and-blood woman canceled fast.

I myownself admire her for it. Own your mistakes, forgive your abusers, move forward standing on the past and pushing into the future on those rocks.

This outing has Author Strout doing something bold: Lucy meets her *other* famous older-woman character, Olive Kitteridge! The glue is a story about a murder...you can read the synopsis above, I feel no need to yak on about it...and, surprisingly, sparks do not fly. They clash, of course, Olive is after all a nasty bully who I myownself disliked the second I met her, but no snarktastic duels of wits ensue. Pity, that, but in keeping with the world Author Strout's created.

Amgash/Crosby is another fictional universe where characters have multiple chances to shine. This time it's mostly about Lucy's platonic bestie, Bob Burgess. They are each other's confidante, talking over things they don't have anyone else to confide in. His troubles, his life's burdens, are the topic he least discusses as he busily solves others' problems, much like Lucy herself.

I am generally very receptive to this sort of intertwined storytelling technique. I've read, and love, EF Benson's Mapp and Lucia books, the massive Barsetshire series shared by Trollope and Thirkell, and some of Miss Read's Fairacre series. These all have the virtue of following a group of characters more or less closely, with individual books having one or another focused on, albeit not usually exclusively. So that's how I keep coming back to this wellhead. I'm ready to involve myself in the lives of strangers when they all know each other, more or less well.

I don't think the Amgash series makes the grade as a successor to those series, at least in my own affections, because I myownself find the dithering that Lucy does, and the bullying that Olive does, incompatible with a lovely immersive read. Entirely a personal assessment, and not in the least meant to discourage anyone from pursuing these reads; just, well, be aware that Lucy's insightful comments and Olive's shrewd observations come wrapped in definite personalities. Since they're not really the ones I find most congenial, I'm not going to warble my fool lungs out singing their praises.

I will say that, in this book's case, I think you're best off reading it after having read Olive Kitteridge and My Name is Lucy Barton first. They're not strictly speaking necessary to have done so but, well, the way this storyverse goes, it helps to know the ladies you're relying on for context before going in.

If those are under your belt, dive in. I'm such an outlier when it comes to these characters. They irk and annoy me. They also come with such a well-conceived storyverse, one that soothes the need to make fictional friends, one that is part of a web of interrelated characters you don't know yet...much like life is. That more than any other quality is why I read the books. It feels prosocial.

Enjoy! I did.