ruthiella 's review for:

Abide with Me by Elizabeth Strout

4.0

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While I have liked every book that I have read from Strout, some of her books hit me harder emotionally than others…which makes me like them best. Like My Name is Lucy Barton I found Abide with Me to be really affecting and beautifully sad. At its core, the book is about a minister, Tyler Caskey, who doesn’t know how to grieve the death of his wife or provide solace to his young daughter Katherine. Set in rural Maine in 1959, the Tyler’s congregation increasingly misunderstands his and Katherine’s behavior and gossip grows and festers in this small community, bringing things to a head. This makes the book sound grim but I didn’t find it so. I easily empathized with every character, regardless of how petty or how self-sacrificing their behavior. This is also an Olive Kitteridge prototype in the book called Ora Kendall (even the same initials!) who is like a breath of fresh air since she is one of the few characters who is brutally honest.
I wasn’t familiar with the hymn “Abide with Me” before reading the book but I have listened to it since and its beautiful melancholy and message of a shared burden as a lightened burden is perfect for this book.