In the village of Crosby, Maine, some characters that we already know from earlier novels by Elizabeth Strout meet: the author Lucy Barton and her ex-husband William, the retired teacher Olive Kitteridge. Lucy features in "My Name Is Lucy Barton" (2016), "Anything Is Possible" (2017), "Oh William!" (2021), "Lucy By the Sea" (2022). Olive Kitteridge features in "Olive Kitteridge" (2008).
The main character is Bob Burgess - who is one of the lead characters in "The Burgess Boys" (2013) - an elderly lawyer who gets involved in defending a man accused of having murdered his mother. Despite this, barely anything happens in the novel. People feel some affection for each other or not, they are afraid to speak up their mind, everything appears to be normal, they talk, they eat, they chat, they visit each other. They are all elderly and their pace is slow. They tell each other stories about other people to fill their days.
The whole point of the story is that "people will be people, with their ups and downs, their good and bad features". And Bob Burgess might be the most boring character ever invented. It is a quaint, petty bourgeois story that quietly babbles along without anything happening to create tension, except for Bob's feeling for Lucy that he never reveals. In the realm of unspoken feelings, Ian McEwan's "Atonement" demonstrates what can be achieved on the subject. This does not even come close in terms of tension or intensity.
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