Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is yet another book by Elizabeth Strout that I greatly enjoyed. Anything Is Possible is hard to categorize: while it is a collection of nine short stories, they are all linked not only by location—a small, rural town in Illinois—but also by the character of Lucy Barton, who even appears in one of the stories. Thus, it wouldn't be incorrect to classify the book as a novel.

More importantly, the stories are unified by their main themes: loneliness, pain of the present, pain of memories, dark shadows of the past, and sadness caused by various human failures. Yet, the stories also show some optimism: compassion, joy, and hope.

Mississippi Mary is probably my favorite story in the collection: it is mainly about difficult mother-daughter love, but it also shows how a relationship between two people has a way of changing over a long period of time from love to hate or indifference. But I also love Dottie's Bed & Breakfast, which reminds us of our ugly need to feel superior to others but also has a flash of humor. Sister, with its dramatic ending, shows us that it is not really possible to come back home having left it many years ago.

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