Earlier this month I read Abide with Me. I wanted to love this. The 1st book I'd ever read by Elizabeth Strout was Olive Kitteridge and I LOVED, LOVED it, so I had high expectations. Really high expectations, in fact. Maybe this was unrealistic, might even have been unfair, but how could I not? I found the prose itself elegant and flawless. The characters, though, were less engaging for me. Same with the storyline. It was slow going and I had to invoke my daughter's you-must-give-a-book-50-pages rule and then again. At about the halfway mark, I felt like I was finally engaged. More of a struggle than I wanted it to be.
