The Burgess Boys

11 hrs. 16 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Elizabeth Strout

Narrator Yulia Yablonskaya

Description

Burgess brothers—Bob and Jim—return to their hometown in Maine to pull their young nephew out of trouble. Years ago, they fled there for New York as fast as they could, escaping the memories of their father’s tragic death. Since childhood, Bob adored his older brother and looked up to him, while Jim pushed him around in return. Now the boys have grown: cynical Jim has become a well-known corporate attorney, and kind-hearted, insecure Bob works for a free legal aid service—and is far less successful in life. Meanwhile, the dying provincial town of Shirley Falls, where their sister still lives, has become a shelter for Somali refugees—and the locals are not at all happy about it. The Burgesses’ nephew, Zak, manages to commit a stunning stupidity: during Ramadan, he brings a severed pig’s head into a mosque. When the grown brothers return to the places of their childhood, the trauma neither of them ever managed to survive crashes down on them all over again. Deeply buried family secrets will be revealed, and much will turn out to be completely different from what it seemed—confirming the author’s words: “In our lives, nobody knows anybody.”

As in the iconic “Olivia Kitteridge,” which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009, Elizabeth Strout, with her razor-sharp insight and deep compassion, explores the tight, tangled connections between people’s characters within a family: resentments and sacrifices, joys and sufferings of related love.