The Burgess Boys, Elizabeth Strout
The Burgess Boys, Elizabeth Strout
4 Rating(s)
List: $22.50 | Sale: $15.75
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The Burgess Boys

Author: Elizabeth Strout

Narrator: Cassandra Campbell

Unabridged: 13 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/26/2013


Synopsis

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, The Burgess Boys is Elizabeth Strout’s newest and perhaps most astonishing work of literary art.
 
Praise for Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Olive Kitteridge
 
“Perceptive, deeply empathetic . . . Olive is the axis around which these thirteen complex, relentlessly human narratives spin themselves into Elizabeth Strout’s unforgettable novel in stories.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
 
“Fiction lovers, remember this name: Olive Kitteridge. . . . You’ll never forget her. . . . [Strout] constructs her stories with rich irony and moments of genuine surprise and intense emotion. . . . Glorious, powerful stuff.”—USA Today
 
“Funny, wicked and remorseful, Mrs. Kitteridge is a compelling life force, a red-blooded original. When she’s not onstage, we look forward to her return. The book is a page-turner because of her.”—San Francisco Chronicle
 
“Deeply human . . . Though loneliness and loss haunt these pages, Strout also supplies gentle humor and a nourishing dose of hope.”—Booklist (starred review)
 
“Olive Kitteridge still lingers in memory like a treasured photograph.”—Seattle Post-Intelligencer
 
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The Washington Post Book World • USA Today • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • Seattle Post-Intelligencer • People • Entertainment Weekly • The Christian Science Monitor • The Plain Dealer • The Atlantic • Rocky Mountain News • Library Journal

About The Author

Elizabeth Strout is the author of Olive Kitteridge, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Abide with Me, a national bestseller and Book Sense pick; and Amy and Isabelle, winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in England. Her short stories have been published in a number of magazines, including The New Yorker and O: The Oprah Magazine. She lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jennifer on January 22, 2013

This novel was one of the most really really really OK books I have ever read. It was so OK that I will forget about it after I am done writing this. Since the author of this book won a Pulitzer, I had higher expectations. In addition to the fact that the writing style was very cold and detached, the......more

Goodreads review by Terrie on August 11, 2023

"The Burgess Boys" by Elizabeth Strout is Family Fiction! This is the March '22 selection for the community book club I join monthly. I had reservations as this author is not one I look for, hope or wait for when there are rumblings of a new book. Yep, I'm an 'Elizabeth Strout Outlier'. This story ce......more

Goodreads review by Susanne on June 21, 2020

Dysfunction. It Runs Rampant in the Burgess Family. “The Burgess Boys” have a checkered past. One that is never spoken of. An incident occurred when Jim and Bob and their sister Susan were children. Something terrible happened. Bob has lived with the guilt ever since. Jim, the eldest brother is happ......more


Quotes

“Strout’s prose propels the story forward with moments of startlingly poetic clarity.”The New Yorker

“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

“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

“[Strout’s] extraordinary narrative gifts are evident again. . . . At times [The Burgess Boys is] almost effortlessly fluid, with superbly rendered dialogue, sudden and unexpected bolts of humor and . . . startling riffs of gripping emotion.”—Associated Press
 
“[Strout] is at her masterful best when conjuring the two Burgess boys. . . . Scenes between them ring so true.”San Francisco Chronicle
 
“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 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

“Reading an Elizabeth Strout novel is like peering into your neighbor’s windows. . . . There is a nuanced tension in the novel, evoked by beautiful and detailed writing. Strout’s manifestations of envy, pride, guilt, selflessness, bigotry and love are subtle and spot-on.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Strout conveys what it feels like to be an outsider very well, whether she’s delving into the quiet inner lives of Somalis in Shirley Falls or showing how the Burgess kids got so alienated from one another. But the details are so keenly observed, you can connect with the characters despite their apparent isolation. . . . [A] gracefully written novel. [Grade:] A.”Entertainment Weekly

“Wincingly funny, moving, wise.”Good Housekeeping

“With her signature lack of sentimentality, a boatload of clear-eyed compassion and a penetrating prose style that makes the novel riveting, Strout tells the story of one Maine family, transformed. Again and again, she identifies precisely the most complex of filial emotions while illuminating our relationships to the larger families we all belong to: a region, a city, America and the world.”More

The Burgess Boys returns to coastal Maine [with] a grand unifying plot, all twists and damage and dark, morally complex revelations. . . . The grand scale suits Strout, who now adds impresario storytelling at book length to the Down East gift for plainspoken wisdom.”Town & Country