The Burgess Boys

( 62 )

Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Elizabeth Strout “animates the ordinary with an astonishing force,” wrote The New Yorker on the publication of her Pulitzer Prize–winning Olive Kitteridge. The San Francisco Chronicle praised Strout’s “magnificent gift for humanizing characters.” Now the acclaimed author returns with a stunning novel as powerful and moving as any work in contemporary literature.
 
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More About This Book

Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Elizabeth Strout “animates the ordinary with an astonishing force,” wrote The New Yorker on the publication of her Pulitzer Prize–winning Olive Kitteridge. The San Francisco Chronicle praised Strout’s “magnificent gift for humanizing characters.” Now the acclaimed author returns with a stunning novel as powerful and moving as any work in contemporary literature.
 
Haunted by the freak accident that killed their father when they were children, Jim and Bob Burgess escaped from their Maine hometown of Shirley Falls for New York City as soon as they possibly could. Jim, a sleek, successful corporate lawyer, has belittled his bighearted brother their whole lives, and Bob, a Legal Aid attorney who idolizes Jim, has always taken it in stride. But their long-standing dynamic is upended when their sister, Susan—the Burgess sibling who stayed behind—urgently calls them home. Her lonely teenage son, Zach, has gotten himself into a world of trouble, and Susan desperately needs their help. And so the Burgess brothers return to the landscape of their childhood, where the long-buried tensions that have shaped and shadowed their relationship begin to surface in unexpected ways that will change them forever.
 
With a rare combination of brilliant storytelling, exquisite prose, and remarkable insight into character, Elizabeth Strout has brought to life two deeply human protagonists whose struggles and triumphs will resonate with readers long after they turn the final page. Tender, tough-minded, loving, and deeply illuminating about the ties that bind us to family and home, The Burgess Boys is Elizabeth Strout’s newest and perhaps most astonishing work of literary art.

Praise for The Burgess Boys

“Elizabeth Strout’s first two books, Abide with Me and Amy and Isabelle, were highly thought of, and her third, Olive Kitteridge, won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. But The Burgess Boys, her most recent novel, is her best yet.”—The Boston Globe
 
“No one should be surprised by the poignancy and emotional vigor of Elizabeth Strout’s new novel. But the broad social and political range of The Burgess Boys shows just how impressively this extraordinary writer continues to develop.”—The Washington Post
 
“Strout’s greatest gift as a writer, outside a diamond-sharp precision that packs 320 fast-paced pages full of insight, is her ability to let the reader in on all the rancor of her characters without making any of them truly detestable. . . . Strout creates a portrait of an American community in turmoil that’s as ambitious as Philip Roth’s American Pastoral but more intimate in tone.”—Time
 
“What truly makes Strout exceptional—and her latest supple and penetrating novel so profoundly affecting—is the perfect balance she achieves between the tides of story and depths of feeling. . . . Every element in Strout’s graceful, many-faceted novel is keenly observed, lustrously imagined and trenchantly interpreted.”—Chicago Tribune
 
“Strout deftly exposes the tensions that fester among families. But she also takes a broader view, probing cultural divides. . . . Illustrating the power of roots, Strout assures us we can go home again—though we may not want to.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

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Editorial Reviews

The Washington Post - Ron Charles
After Amy and Isabelle, Abide with Me and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge, no one should be surprised by the poignancy and emotional vigor of Elizabeth Strout's new novel. But the broad social and political range of The Burgess Boys shows just how impressively this extraordinary writer continues to develop…As she showed in Olive Kitteridge, Strout is something of a connoisseur of emotional cruelty. But does anyone capture middle age quite as tenderly? Those latent fears—of change, of not changing, of being alone, of being stuck forever with the same person. There seems no limit to her sympathy, her ability to express, without the acrid tone of irony, our selfish, needy anxieties that only family can aggravate—and quell.
The New York Times Book Review - Sylvia Brownrigg
…fluid and compassionate…Strout handles her storytelling with grace, intelligence and low-key humor, demonstrating a great ear for the many registers in which people speak to their loved ones.
Publishers Weekly
Strout’s follow-up to her 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner Olive Kitteridge links a trio of middle-aged siblings with a group of Somali immigrants in a familiar story about isolation within families and communities. The Burgesses have troubles both public and secret: sour, divorced Susan, who stayed in the family’s hometown of Shirley Falls, Maine, with her teenage son Zachary; big-hearted Bob, who feels guilty about their father’s fatal car accident; and celebrity defense lawyer Jim, who moved to Brooklyn, N.Y. When Zachary hurls a bloody pig’s head into a Somali mosque during Ramadan, fragile connections between siblings, the Somalis, and other Shirley Falls residents are tested. Jim’s bullish meddling into Zach’s trial hurts rather than helps, and Susan’s inability to act without her brothers’ advice cements her role as the weakest link (and least interesting character). Finally, when Jim’s neurotic wife, Helen, witnesses the depth of her husband’s indifference and Bob’s ex-wife, Pam, finds the security of her new life in Manhattan tested by nostalgia for Shirley Falls, Zach’s fate—and that of the Somalis—becomes an unfortunate afterthought. Strout excels in constructing an intricate web of circuitous family drama, which makes for a powerful story, but the familiarity of the novel’s questions and a miraculously disentangled denouement drain the story of depth. Agent: Lisa Bankoff, ICM. (Apr.)
Kirkus Reviews
Two squabbling brothers confront their demons, their crumbling love lives and a hate crime case that thrusts them back to their Maine roots. The titular boys of this follow-up to Strout's Pulitzer-winning 2008 short story collection, Olive Kitteridge, are Jim and Bob Burgess, who are similar on the surface--lawyers, New Yorkers--but polar opposites emotionally. Jim is a high-wattage trial attorney who's quick with a cruel rejoinder designed to put people in their place, while Bob is a divorcé who works for Legal Aid and can't shake the guilt of killing his dad in a freak accident as a child. The two snap into action when their sister's son in their native Maine is apprehended for throwing a pig's head into a mosque. The scenario gives Strout an opportunity to explore the culture of the Somalis who have immigrated to the state in recent years--a handful of scenes are told from the perspective of a Somali cafe owner, baffled by American arrogance, racism and cruelty. But this is mainly a carefully manicured study of domestic (American and household) dysfunction with some rote messages about the impermanence of power and the goodness that resides in hard-luck souls--it gives nothing away to say that Jim comes to a personal reckoning and that Bob isn't quite the doormat he's long been thought to be. Speeding the plot turns along are Jim's wife, Helen, an old-money repository of white guilt, and Jim and Bob's sister, Susan, a hardscrabble repository of parental anxiety. Strout's writing is undeniably graceful and observant: She expertly captures the frenetic pace of New York and relative sluggishness of Maine. But her character arrangements often feel contrived, archetypal and predestined; Jim's in particular becomes a clichéd symbol of an overinflated ego. A skilled but lackluster novel that dutifully ticks off the boxes of family strife, infidelity and ripped-from-the-headlines issues.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781400067688
  • Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
  • Publication date: 3/26/2013
  • Pages: 336
  • Sales rank: 51
  • Product dimensions: 6.64 (w) x 9.34 (h) x 1.22 (d)

Meet the Author

Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth Strout
Since the publication of Amy and Isabelle, Elizabeth Strout’s bestselling debut novel, seven years have passed. Now that her second novel, Abide with Me, is finally seeing the light of day, her fans are learning that good things are always worth waiting for.

Biography

With the kind of reception that Elizabeth Strout's debut novel Amy and Isabelle received, one might have expected her to rush right back to her writing desk to author a follow-up while the proverbial iron was still hot. However, that is not the way that Strout works. "I wish tremendously that I was faster about all this," she recently told Bookpage.com. "But, you know, it didn't turn out to be that way." It ultimately took her about seven years to write Abide with Me, her sophomore effort, and the amount of time she put into crafting the novel is apparent on every page.

The multitudinous hours that went into writing Abide with Me are not anything new to Elizabeth Strout. She took any equally measured number of years to writer her debut, which she developed out of a short story. "It took me around three years to ‘clear my throat' for this book," she told Bookreporter.com at the time of the release of Amy and Isabelle. "During much of that time Amy and Isabelle remained a story. Once I got down to actually writing it as a novel it took another six or seven years." However, the pay off for the time she spent writing this humorous, expertly rendered tale of the troubled relationship between a mother and her daughter was substantial. Amy and Isabelle received nearly unanimous praise, lauded by Mademoiselle, The New Yorker, Newsweek, Time Magazine, People Magazine, and Publishers Weekly, to name just a few. The novel also nabbed nominations for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Orange Prize for Fiction, and was the subject of a 2001 made-for-television movie starring Elizabeth Shue.

So, what kept Strout from completing her second novel sooner? Perhaps it was her unorthodox writing methods. "I try to get in three or four hours (of writing per day)," she explains, "and I put off having lunch for as long as I can because having lunch seems to change the energy flow. If I'm lucky, I'll get through till one o'clock. And then I throw everything out. And that's a morning's work."

While Strout may be indulging in a little good-natured, comical leg-pulling, she did not write Abide with Me to elicit giggles from her readers. This somber piece introduces Tyler Caskey, a minister in a small New England community whose mounting personal doubts following a tragedy cause the community that he serves to develop their own doubts about his ability to guide them spiritually.

While Abide with Me stands in contrast to the comparatively humorous Amy and Isabelle, it was not Strout's intention to render a serious exploration of theology or religion. She views the book as more of a character study. "It is the story of a minister," she explains. "I was interested in writing about a religious man who is genuine in his religiosity and who gets confronted with such sadness so abruptly that he loses himself. Not his faith, but his faith in himself."

With the admiration already pouring in for Abide with Me, Strout may very well have another bestseller on her hands. Publishers Weekly has called this striking novel "a harrowing meditation of exile on Main Street," while Booklist suggested that "Readers who enjoyed...Amy and Isabelle... will find much to move them in this tale of a man trying to get past his grief amid a town full of colorful people with their own secrets and heartaches."

Such praise may be of little interest to Strout, who once told Bookreporter.com, "When I finish a piece, I put it behind me and look to my future work." But considering her leisurely work methods, it may be several years before her readers get their hands on her any of her future work -- not that Strout needs to worry about whether or not her fans will forget her. As long as she continues producing work as rich and compelling as Amy and Isabelle and Abide with Me, she can take all the time she needs.

Update:
In 2009 Strout was honored with a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Olive Kitteridge, a collection of connected short stories about a woman and her immediate family and friends on the coast of Maine.

Good To Know

Some fun and fascinating outtakes from our interview with Strout:

"My first job was when I was about 12, cleaning houses in the afternoons for different elderly women in town. I hated it. I would be so bored scrubbing at some kitchen tile, that my mind would finally float all over the place, to the beach, to a friend's house...all this happened in my mind as I scrubbed those tiles, so it was certainly good for my imagination. But I did hate it."

"Without a doubt my mother was an inspiration for my writing. This is true in many ways, but mostly because she is a wonderful storyteller, without even knowing it. I would listen, as a child, when some friend of hers came to visit, and they would gossip about the different people they knew. My mother had the most fascinating stories about people's families, murderers, mental illnesses, babies abandoned, and she delivered it all in a matter-of-fact way that was terribly compelling. It made me believe that there was nothing more interesting than the lives of people, their real hidden lives, and this of course can lead one down the path of becoming a fiction writer."

"Later, in college, one of my favorite things was to go into town and sit at the counter at Woolworth's (so tragic to have them gone!) and listen to people talking; the waitresses and the customers -- I loved it. I still love to eavesdrop, but mostly I like the idea of being around people who are right in the middle of their lives, revealing certain details to each other -- leaving the rest for me to make up."

"I love theater. I love sitting in an audience and having the actors right there, playing out what it means to be a human being. There is something about the actual relationship that is going on between the audience and the actors that I just love. I love seeing the sets and costumes, the decisions that have been made about the staging...it's a place for the eye and the ear to be fully involved. I have always loved theater."

"I also like cell phones. What I mean by that is I hear many people complain about cell phones; they can't go anywhere without hearing someone on a cell phone, etc. But I love that chance to hear half a conversation, even if the person is just saying, ‘Hi honey, I'll be home in ten minutes, do you want me to bring some milk?' And I'm also grateful to have a cell phone, just to know it's there if I need it when I'm out and about. So I'm a cell phone fan."

"I don't especially like to travel, not the way many people do. I know many people that love to go to far-off and different places, and I've never been like that. I seem to get homesick as quickly as a child. I may like being in some new place for a few days, but then I want to go home and return to my routine and my familiar corner stores. I am a real creature of habit, without a doubt."

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    1. Hometown:
      Brooklyn, New York
    1. Date of Birth:
      January 6, 1956
    2. Place of Birth:
      Portland, Maine
    1. Education:
      B.A., Bates College, 1977; J.D., Syracuse College of Law, 1982
    2. Website:
      http://www.elizabethstrout.com

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 3
( 62 )
Rating Distribution

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(12)

4 Star

(17)

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(15)

2 Star

(6)

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(12)

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See All Sort by: Showing 1 – 20 of 62 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted April 3, 2013

    I don't usually leave recommendations, but I decided this book n

    I don't usually leave recommendations, but I decided this book needed to be talked about. I read Olive Ketteridge previously and knew this would also be a wonderful book. I love a good story with strong characters and this has both. There are no wild twists or torns, no sex, and no intrigue - just good story telling with a message. If you hunger for a good story, this is it.

    16 out of 17 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 26, 2013

    Definitely Reccomend

    As soon as I saw that Elizabeth Stroud had a new book coming out I pre-ordered The Burgess Boys! I was hooked on the author after reading Olive Kitteridge which I loved. This book is ultimately a story of a family's entertwined lives and how each member fits into the family dynamic while dealing with a crisis. I enjoy reading Ms. Stroud's style of writing, it keeps me turning the pages. Some may find the interaction between the family members uncomfortable to read at times but it is true to the story.

    4 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 1, 2013

    ?

    This is a book review site not a chat room!!!!!!

    2 out of 38 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted April 27, 2013

    Not a book for Everyone

    Elizabeth Strout has her own style of writing, which pleases the literary critics. However, subject content is another matter. This book did not hold my interest, and I found it difficult to get through the entire book. In fact, other than emphasis on social issues of the day, I was left wondering what point she was trying to make, and when she was going to get to the story. We get enough of such concentrations by the media, we don't need acclaimed writers to devote an entire book to such. I was truly disappointed. I book so highly recommended is not one I would recommend.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 27, 2013

    Strout Strikes Gold

    The Burgess Boys is the story of a family of siblings that come together to assist a son and nephew accused of a hate crime. He has bowled a pig head into a mosque during services. While he exits the scene to visit his father, the uncles relationships deteriorate. Strout really understands her brothers and Cassandra Campbell interprets all of her characters brilliantly. This book is for anyone who likes stories about families and relationships. I enjoyed Strout's Olive Kitteridge as well. I would enjoy leading a book club discussion of this book.

    1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 16, 2013

    I Also Recommend:

    MYSTIC

    Love it, Also love Too Crazy To Live Too Beautiful To Die def re

    Love it, Also love Too Crazy To Live Too Beautiful To Die
    def recommend
    great read

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 9, 2013

    Good charecters Rectwr

    Slow at times but great writer

    1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted May 24, 2013

    Elizabeth Strout - The Burgess Boys As in her Pulitzer winning n

    Elizabeth Strout - The Burgess Boys
    As in her Pulitzer winning novel Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout’s The Burgess Boys is populated by flawed characters living in an imperfect world where grace comes from unexpected sources.  One should not assume that her writing is in anyway formulaic however as both books are exceptionally well written and reveal insights that have this reader at least questioning past, present, and future.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 24, 2013

    Recommend.

    A bit sad and realistic but happy moments. I anticipated some of the plot and wasn't too surprised.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 17, 2013

    What a disapointment~!

    I trust Barnes and Noble in directing me to good books. I did not find this book well written. It did not hold my attention, but I never fail to finish a book; however, I was glad to get to the unsatisfying end.

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  • Posted May 15, 2013

    A great follow-up to "Olive Kittridge"

    Elizabeth Strout is a master at portraying the people who lead very ordinary yet complex lives. She has captured the essence of siblings who lead lives apart, yet are inextricably intertwined. This story is heartbreaking yet hopeful. I found myself cheering for each character's road to self-discovery. Ms. Strout writes for those who are deep thinkers, those who aren't afraid to uncover the secrets of human behavior.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 10, 2013

    Enjoyed a lot

    The book was very enjoyable. I like the way Elizabeth Strout writes about everyday life. Even though the book was good, I preferred her book titled Isabelle and Amy. But far and away her best book is Olive Kitteridge.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 8, 2013

    Enjoyable and well written

    The story did not initially hold my interest but I liked her writing style and kept reading. I'm glad I did as the relationship between the brothers and the sister took an unexpected turn.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 4, 2013

    Lovely Read

    Wasn't predictable. Real life family situations and lessons. Great read!

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 29, 2013

    The Burgess Boys dissapoints

    I gave up 200 plus pages in. I just couldn't torture myself with this book any longer? The characters are all unlikeable, and nothing happened.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 29, 2013

    Not what was expected

    I am currently reading this read and am finding it tedious and difficult to stay interested or even get interested in. I am hoping things liven up soon or I may give it up.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 29, 2013

    Excellent novel

    This is a beautifully written book that I couldn't put down. Sorry it had to end.

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  • Posted April 26, 2013

    A good read!

    Enjoyed this book very much. I would be open to reading other books by this author!

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted April 26, 2013

    I thought her other books were great, but I couldn't get into th

    I thought her other books were great, but I couldn't get into this one at all.

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  • Posted April 26, 2013

    Boring and depressing.

    Depressing story. Would not recommend to anyone.

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