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Abide with Me

A Novel

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Abide with Me

By: Elizabeth Strout
Narrated by: Gerrianne Raphael
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About this listen

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Olive Kitteridge and My Name is Lucy Barton comes a “deeply moving” (The Washington Post) novel that “confirms Strout as the possessor of an irresistibly companionable, peculiarly American voice” (The Atlantic Monthly).

“Superb . . . a shimmering tale of loss, faith, and human fallibility.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

In the late 1950s, in a small New England town, Reverend Tyler Caskey has suffered a terrible loss and finds it hard to be the person he once was. He struggles to find the right words in his sermons and in his conversations with those facing crises of their own, and to bring his five-year-old daughter, Katherine, out of the silence she has observed in the wake of the family’s tragedy. Tyler’s usually patient and kind congregation now questions his leadership and propriety, and accusations are born out of anger and gossip. Then, in Tyler’s darkest hour, a startling discovery will test his parish’s humanity—and his own will to endure the trials that sooner or later test us all.
Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological

Critic reviews

“Strout’s greatly anticipated second novel . . . is an answered prayer.”Vanity Fair

“Superb . . . a shimmering tale of loss, faith, and human fallibility . . . You feel yourself in the hands of a master storyteller.”O: The Oprah Magazine

“Deeply moving . . . In one beautiful page after another, Strout captures the mysterious combinations of hope and sorrow. She sees all these wounded people with heartbreaking clarity, but she has managed to write a story that cradles them in understanding and that, somehow, seems like a foretaste of salvation.”The Washington Post

“This lovely second novel confirms Strout as the possessor of an irresistibly companionable, peculiarly American voice: folksy, poetic, but always as precise as a shadow on a brilliant winter day.”The Atlantic Monthly

“Graceful and moving . . . The pacing of Strout’s deeply felt fiction about the distance between parents and children gives her work an addictive quality.”People (four stars)
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I found it depressing, there was nothing witty or outrageous as in Lucy Barton or the Olive books it was a low-level sadness that permeated all characters and all moments and the narration made everyone more annoying than they needed to be.

I’m a huge Strout fan but not this one

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