Tell Me Everything

In Elizabeth Strout’s Tell Me Everything, the mention of “parasites” becomes a running joke, a shorthand way of describing how self-involved people can be. William, Lucy Barton’s husband and a peripheral figure in the novel, is a parasitologist, and he often talks for hours about his work, failing to ask other people questions in the process. Though William’s naval-gazing is funny (and often a source of comedy between Bob and Lucy), one grocery store conversation with William—when Bob is mourning the loss of his sister-in-law Helen to cancer—so depresses Bob that he laments, “God, we are all so alone.” On the one hand, then, William’s focus on his parasites represents how each individual’s preoccupations can get in the way of opportunities for mutual connection and comfort. On the other hand, however, William becomes increasingly aware of how much he talks about his work, even apologizing to Bob for his focus on his parasites. And by the end of the novel, William limits how often he talks about them. Thus even as William’s parasites symbolize the perils of self-involvement, they also show each person’s capacity for change, as William begins to see beyond “parasites and potatoes,” paying more attention to people instead.