Like Olive Kitteridge, Anything is Possible is a book of linked short stories, but this time based around Lucy Barton (from My Name is Lucy Barton) and the town she grew up in. And it's wonderful. The writing is lucid, the characters real, and the situations they find themselves in, the relationships they have with each other are excruciatingly honest and believable. There's love and hate, pain and redemption. The stories deal a lot with American class: what happens to you as an adult when your childhood is poor, both emotionally and financially. Despite the many saddnesses the stories cover, I still felt uplifted, and the message Strout seems to want to deliver is a positive one; that yes, despite an awful upbringing we all have the capacity for change.

Thanks to Penguin for the proof copy.

www.clairefuller.co.uk