Abide With Me by Elizabeth Strout (2006)

Wow. Elizabeth Strout has a powerful gift for opening up quiet lives, quiet moments, and showing them in 3-D. This, her second novel, is set in late 50s New England, two years after minister Tyler Caskey's wife has died. His young daughter won't talk, and his congregation is becoming increasingly dissatisfied with him. His life is slowly falling apart, but Caskey distracts himself with reading martyrs and saints. He must find a way to reconnect with his daughter, his congregation, and his God.

Strout is so spookily aware of what goes on inside people's heads that at times I felt exposed. Yes, I had those thoughts too, I did that, I saw things that way...but that was PRIVATE, so how did she know? This makes her hard for me to discuss, because pointing out examples makes me feel even more exposed.

I especially appreciate, as mentioned above, Strout's ability to show us people in the round--people that seem easy to dismiss or categorize, sometimes even by other folks in their lives. The overprotective weirdo with the bomb shelter, the annoying harpy with a crush on the minister: they got that way for a reason and they're not just that.

We gain her privileged point of view, of the novelist and perhaps of the good minister too, and almost reach that point where to know all is to forgive all. Perhaps it's one drawback in Strout's work that no one is truly evil or unredeemable, and I believe that some people just are.

This is a beautiful novel, as clear, stark, and lovely as a Maine winter day.