Abide with Me: A Novel

After having read and loved Olive Kitteridge, Lucy Barton and then Amy and Isabelle I had great expectations for Abide with Me.It’s a good book with most of the wonderful qualities of the others but somehow the characters meant less to me and i found the the hero to be a dull character. I felt he had less psychological depth than most of the characters in the other books which is surprising as he is the central character and Elizabeth is one of the best writers of psychologically layered characters i have ever read. Perhaps i didn’t enjoy the constant use of biblical text. I’m not sure really why this novel didn’t work so well for me. It hasn’t put me off though and I’m about to open The Burgess Boys. Wish me luck.

Reading Elizabeth Strout's "Abide with Me" reminded me how fiction can sometime capture the truth of things better than a factual account, just as a fine painting can sometimes be more truthful than a photograph of the same scene.I heard Strout speak a few years ago at a Bangor Theological Seminary Convocation, and I knew her book was about a congregational minister in rural Maine, but I only just got around to reading it. I'm glad I did.The resonances for me to my own life are striking. I am not Tyler Caskey, her protagonist, but I did begin my ministry in a couple of very small rural Maine towns that bear a notable resemblance to the fictional West Annett. And I left those congregations to become the chaplain at Bangor Seminary, which is the model for Tyler's alma mater, Brockmorton Theological Seminary (a whimsical reference I am sure to my late former colleague, iconic Bangor New Testament Professor Burton H. Throckmorton.)Like Tyler I married a Massachusetts gal who came up to live with me in the parsonage to much speculation. There are many differences to be sure: I started my ministry in the mid 70's and Tyler in the late 50's, but things in small town Maine hadn't changed all that much.Stout deftly describes the "wheels within wheels" complexity behind the seemingly simple social life of a small Maine town. The people of West Annett endure the soul-numbing endless winter, and they are unaware of how they have embraced their dearth of possibilities as a virtue.Strout takes her time. You know from the first page that some bad things have happened to Tyler Caskey and the denizens of West Annett, but she is no hurry to tell you what they are. Her storytelling is like peeling an onion, and that in itself captures the rhythm of these small towns, where nothing ever seems to happen on the surface when it is really as busy as an ant farm just below.Tyler himself is a loveable character, too earnest by half, with his love of Bonhoeffer, his tenderness toward is wounded young daughter, and his quiet faithfulness in his daily round. Strout knows her church, and she knows something of the grandeur and misery of the ministry, as the minister can move in a minute from reading the Cost of Discipleship to hearing tawdry local gossip or the sordid confession of a soured marriage. Her cast of characters will bring a smile to many a rural parson: the hostile husband reading the paper in the car in the church parking lot, the loyalist who routinely phones Tyler to warn him what's up, several variants of antagonists, and the married woman with a crush on the minister as well as a bone to pick.Strout observes her characters with clear eyes, and her depictions at times just miss being cruel. If you care for these flawed people at all it is because of something like grace, since they are not "good" people in the way that real people generally are not. Yet in the end, in keeping with its subject matter, this is a story of redemption. Strout doesn't clean up the messiness of life, but she knows that the holy rhythm that runs from Good Friday to Easter isn't confined to ancient Jerusalem.I don't want to give too much away. Read Abide with Me. It's the kind of book that when you finish the last page and close the cover you are already missing the characters.[...]

This was recommended as “literary” and “Christian” fiction. It was well written, indeed literary. And Christian is a very elastic term these days, I won’t quibble over the use of the term. As many others have pointed out, it is about the rather tragic life of a young pastor of a mainline church in a little town in New England. His faith is challenged by personal tragedy and petty gossip.Some have called it slow. I didn’t find it “slow” reading at all. For me it was a page turner. What was a real issue with me was the gratuitous, vulgar descriptions of sex (explaining the inner workings of one man’s affair with an anonymous “woman from Boston.”). Such an objection will be dismissed as puritanical, I suppose, but I make it nonetheless. The resolution of the affair was pretty casual; I’m not sure the man really knew much about repentance, or sought it. His long suffering wife certainly put up with a lot. Other characters were, I thought, pretty finely drawn, and the author brought in some surprises along the way. I liked Tyler, the pastor, and wanted him to be delivered (from his overbearing, controlling mother, his dismissive in laws, his petty parishioners, and intrusive school officials). Many pastors are people pleasers, not that those kind ever make the news, and to see him vindicated and supported at the end of the book was gratifying. For all that, I just wouldn’t read it again, or suggest that anyone else do so. There are ways to write about immorality without being vulgar. It cheapened the whole thing for me. The many positive reviews here indicate that most weren’t offended. So be it. I think the book could have been elevated, and more powerful without the graphic sex, it wasn’t needed.

This book is well written with extensive character development and descriptions of places and circumstances. Ms Strout is an excellent writer. I enjoy her books immensely.

This is a masterpiece for me!The characters, especially the main one, a grieving minister, father and widower, were so real and bristling with life that I was constantly drawn back to the book wanting to know, empathize, root for the man and his two very young daughters. The narrative had many different sub-plots, taking the reader into the past to understand the characters' backgrounds, into the different lives of the people who were talking behind the minister's back and those who were not involved in the spinning of assumptions, the minister's five year old daughter and her grief and deep confusion about how to deal with the loss, the lives also of those who appreciated his kindness and unbreakable endurance skills.It's a book I can only marvel about, urge others to read and experience for themselves and that I definitely plan to read again in the future!

What an amazing read this was. I liked that it gave us, the readers, a glimpse into just one ministers heart. His struggles which were many including loneliness, heartbreak and grief and his aspiration, after all that had taken place, to find himself back in the role of God.His memory of "the feeling" of God's presence.And his realisation that that can be present when we are at our lowest, when all pretends is gone and we stand naked before God and what were previously our earthly foes. (His congregants)It astonished me that there was such a lack of compassion for the community's own spiritual leader in his time of need and I have no doubt this scenario gets played out up and down our own country. It is a lonely place and a solid relationship with God is essential to carry out this calling.The undertones of what was taking place in parishioners lives beneath the surface was mostly dark. Again, I am sure this is often so in reality too.Great read. One of my favourite authoresses.

I was intrigued by the back story: a bereaved family, man losing his young wife, a young child losing her mum. Some similarities to by husbands situation when his first wife died and left 3 kids one of whom ideas 6.The “plot” for what it was worth was very thin and the non-biblical “biblical quotes” were so unnecessary. One or two maybe but not to the point of exhaustion.I felt there was far too much unnecessary add ins that left me cold and all of which I skipped over. And who is that B dude - I skipped over all of that.And then there was Charlie with that woman in Boston and the ridiculous gratuitous sex references to threesomes and the size of his genitals. Seriously! Why didn’t we get a look into more of the characters’ lives?The story could be told in about half the words or even less. I finished the book only to find out what happened to Kitty Kat.First and last from this author. This book definitely did not do it for me.

A compellingly sad story about a minister and his flock in a rural US community. He's lost his wife and we follow him through a year of struggling with that loss and the sadness of the flawed marriage that went before. Events in real-time (his daughter malfunctioning badly at school, his housekeeper's troubled personal life) aren't happy either. I hit a point around 2/3 the way through where I thought I was sliding down a slippery slope to misery, reading this, but I recommend you persevere. Events turn in interesting directions, and the end is worth sticking out for.

A powerful piece of writing. The Elizabeth Strout books that I have read are awe inspiring. She is one of the best writers I have had the pleasure of reading. For me, she ranks with Greene and Maugham. I purchased this book from USA in order to read it. It is a superb work and the very best example of story telling. The characters are totally believable and memorable.