Reviews with content warning for Fatphobia - Anything Is Possible

I just don’t vibe with Strout’s writing I guess? It’s very stream of consciousness, telling more than showing as if the reader won’t know what’s happening otherwise. It’s also becoming a clear theme that Strout’s characters (dare I say the author herself given the obsession) are fatphobic and body shame other characters often. Based on another reviewer, this theme continues throughout the whole book and I love myself too much to suffer through this 2000s bullshit

Content Warnings

deedireads's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/reads/.

TL;DR REVIEW:

Elizabeth Strout has done it again. Anything Is Possible is a beautiful and tender of a portrait of a community told through the eyes of its people, one story at a time.

For you if: You like linked short stories and rich characters.

FULL REVIEW:

I haven’t read all of her backlist yet, but I still feel like I can say that Elizabeth Strout is at her best writing books just like this: short stories about different people in the same town. It’s what made Olive Kitteridge the success it was, and it’s what makes this one sparkle with life and squeeze your heart in the absolute best way.

Anything Is Possible s a sort of sequel to My Name is Lucy Barton. It introduces us to many of the people in Lucy’s remote hometown of Amgash, Illinois, through nine linked short stories. Lucy is mentioned throughout, as she’s just published a memoir, and she makes an appearance in one of them, told through her brother’s perspective. She’s a link between these characters, but she’s not the star of the show: they are, and to a possibly even greater extent, Amgash itself is.

I have no idea how Elizabeth Strout manages to write characters that could just walk off the page, fully formed. But it might be even more impressive how she’s able to use them to paint a much larger picture of a place and its community. Each of these characters’ stories broke my heart — their lives have not been easy, and it made some of them more tender and some of them harder. There is pain, humor, and love in these pages that really sticks with you.

I’m excited to go back to Amgash with Oh, William! next month!

Content Warnings

hmuraski27's review

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I read and enjoyed My Name is Lucy Barton earlier this year, and wanted to keep reading the Amgash books so picked this one up. It's different from the first in the series in that it's told through vignettes from the POV of various people in/on the periphery of Lucy's life (her cousins, her brother, her father's former employer, etc), but I enjoyed it. This storytelling vehicle felt very akin to Olive Kitteridge.

The writing was good (very Strout-y, if you are familiar with her work), the stories themselves were pretty melancholy which is sometimes my jam, and I did appreciate the reading experience. But the rampant fat shaming & fat phobia were a bit much. Almost every chapter made at least one reference to an overweight character in incredibly demeaning, insulting ways. A man is found to have been cheating on his thin wife for a decade with a BIG FAT woman! Can you believe it? Why would a man EVER cheat on his thin wife with a woman of size??? Eww! In one chapter, Strout makes a minimum of 6 or 7 digs against a larger woman in the space of like 5 pages (observing that her watch band was cutting into her fleshy wrist, disgusted description of a strip of flesh between her pants and blouse, that she can't lift her knee up to rest on the couch because she's too large and it reminds the POV character of a wheelchair-bound person he once saw, etc) and it just felt so unnecessary and crude. I found the stereotyping to be boring and predictable (fat characters are bad/disgusting, thin characters are good/attractive basically).

If it hadn't been for the fatphobia, I'd have given this one 4.5 stars, but I'm rounding my 2.5 up to a 3 since I do like Strout's work and the reading experience with this book was enjoyable otherwise.

Content Warnings

feebles640's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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