I’m going on a short vacation this weekend, so instead of my usual Friday/Saturday post, I decided I should join in on another…

Teaser Tuesday, the weekly bookish meme hosted by Ambrosia of The Purple Booker.

It is very easy to play along:

• Grab your current read and open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS!
• Share the title & author, too, so that other participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here are my “teasers”  for February 26, 2019:

And she knew, Angelina knew, that she had seen something important when her mother helped the man who was unsteady crossing the street. Briefly–it would be brief, Angelina knew this, she knew she would always be the child–but briefly a ceiling had been raised; she pictured her mother’s quick and gracious loveliness to that man on the street: A street in a village on the coast of Italy, her mother, a pioneer.

This teaser comes from “Mississippi Mary” one of the short stories in “Anything is Possible” by Elizabeth Strout, and it is a sequel to her novel “My Name is Lucy Barton” (which was her first “Amgash” book). This connected, short story collection was published on April 25th, 2017 by Random House.

Goodreads description:

Short story collection Anything Is Possible explores the whole range of human emotion through the intimate dramas of people struggling to understand themselves and others.

Here are two sisters: one trades self-respect for a wealthy husband while the other finds in the pages of a book a kindred spirit who changes her life. The janitor at the local school has his faith tested in an encounter with an isolated man he has come to help; a grown daughter longs for mother love even as she comes to accept her mother’s happiness in a foreign country; and the adult Lucy Barton (the heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton) returns to visit her siblings after seventeen years of absence.

My Thoughts so far:

My husband and I bought this because we both really enjoyed “My Name is Lucy Barton” and I’ve had her connected short stories “Olive Kitteridge” been on my TRB list for… ever! That said, and while Strout is an amazing writer and I’m in awe of how she builds these characters and describes this small town, I think I enjoyed the novel Lucy Barton just a bit more. We shall see!

I hope you enjoyed my teasers!

Have you read this book yet?  Do you plan on reading it?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

“Anything is Possible” is available from Amazon, Wordery, The Book Depository (free worldwide delivery), the website eBooks.com, iTunes (iBook or audiobook),  Walmart (Kobo) US eBooks and audiobooks, new or used from Better World Books (promoting libraries and world literary) and Alibris, as well as from an IndieBound store near you.