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“But after Susan Burgess’s son did what he did—after the story about him had been in the newspapers, even in ’The New York Times��, and on television too—I said on the phone to my mother, ‘I think I’m going to write the story of the Burgess kids.��

‘It’s a good one,�� she agreed.

‘People will say it’s not nice to write about people I know.��

My mother was tired that night. She yawned. ��’Well, you don’t know them,�� she said. ‘Nobody ever knows anyone.�� ��

Ain’t that the truth? I don’t always ‘like�� Elizabeth Strout’s people, but I’ve always loved how she describes them and their relationships with each other. I recognise everyone in this story.

The father of the three Burgess children was killed in a car accident in their driveway when they were little kids, and that hangs over them still. Their mother seems to have been a woman of opinions.

“My mother did not like Unitarians; she thought they were atheists who didn’t want to be left out of the fun of Christmas. . . ��

Jim Burgess is the eldest, a popular New York lawyer who famously won an unlikely case defending someone who was commonly believed to be guilty (like OJ Simpson).

Jim enjoys his popularity and so does, or did, his attractive, independently wealthy wife, Helen. Now she's suffering from empty-nest syndrome . . . “her children, she wanted them small again, moist from their baths��.

Twins Bob and Susan Burgess don’t seem to share much twinness, other than that both are unhappily divorced (and missing their exes), and both have looked up to their big brother all their lives. Jim’s their golden boy who knows everybody. The one they call when there’s trouble.

The brothers both live in New York, but Susan is still back “home��, with her lonely, troubled son, Zach, in Shirley Falls, a small, very white (until recently) town in Maine. Shirley Falls has had an influx of Somali refugees, headscarves and all, which has divided the town.

When young Zach gets in trouble in Shirley Falls, what does Susan do? Call Jim. And what does Jim do? Palms off the responsibility to Bob, because Jim and Helen have a fancy holiday booked. And what does good-ol�� Bob do? Borrows Jim’s car and reluctantly drives to Maine to stay with his twin sister in in her freezing cold, miserable house and listen to her complain about the do-gooders who brag about helping frightened refugee families.

“That’s how it was for me, back when Steve left. I was scared to death. I didn’t know if I’d be able to keep this place. Nobody offered to buy me a refrigerator. Nobody offered to buy me a meal. And I was dying, frankly. I was lonelier than I bet these Somalians are. They have family crawling all over them.��

Incidentally, when Susan says “Somalians��, she is corrected and told it’s “Somalis��. The little town had a steep learning curve. Mind you, they’d been equally ‘welcoming�� in the past to the incoming tide of French-Canadian mill workers “who stuck to themselves, too��. And they are no longer French-Canadians but “Franco-Americans, please��.

This really is warts-and-all, small-towns. I’ll spare you my own comments by hiding them here (not really a spoiler).

(view spoiler)[Strout concentrates on Maine, but my experience is that people are people and towns are towns all over the world. Strangers are automatically viewed with a combination of suspicion and curiosity, depending on your age and experience.

Eventually, a new lot of newcomers will arrive, and the ‘old�� lot will be accepted more as locals as they gang up on the newcomers. And my experience with community service organisations is that they all say about migrant populations “they look after their own��. Yeah, right. No, they don’t. But I digress. (hide spoiler)]

The author grew up in small-town Maine but lived in New York for many years. She’s been back to Maine often to see the changes and meet its newest citizens, so she writes from the heart. This got a little too preachy and messagey for me, but I still love reading her work.

She recently moved back to Maine during the Covid 19 pandemic.