I recently finished Strout's Abide With Me. In this novel, a young minister, Tyler Caskey, loses his beautiful, mercurial wife and struggles to care for his two small daughters and regain his spiritual footing in the spiral of grief and disillusionment that follows. The parishioners of West Annett, Maine are a cast of regular folks--some frail and nervous, others bawdy, angry, and stir-crazy. Many are loving and loyal, even as they occasionally whisper behind each others' backs. Tyler Caskey, their pastor, grapples with a faith that leaves him breathless and grateful in one moment, and burdened and hollow the next. He lassos his despairing thoughts and counters their pull by meditating on scripture and the rigorous teachings of the great Protestant martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Strout paints a haunting, sweet portrait of a man's purification and personal resurrection through pain.
While the book deals honestly and sympathetically with issues of faith, it is not "religious fiction" (which often feels to me like the writer is man-handling the plot and manipulating marionette-characters to teach spiritual maxims). Rather, Strout's characters speak a stripped down truth--about God and themselves. They are as unapologetically inconsistent, irrationally hopeful, and nakedly desperate as the rest of us. The story Strout tells is sensitive and unflinchingly true. The writing is (as always) careful, lyrical, and evocative. Despite the subject matter, Abide With Me is not a "downer," nor does it drag at any point. In fact, I found it to be a total "I can't stop reading even though it's 2:00 a.m. and I have to get up early and my hands hurt from holding the book" page-turner. Readitreaditreadit. Have you? Tell me what you think.
