BRIEFLY NOTED.(Abide with Me, by Elizabeth Strout)(Book review)

Publication: The New Yorker

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COPYRIGHT 2006 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Abide with Me, by Elizabeth Strout (Random House; $24.95). The handsome minister Tyler Caskey, of West Annett, Maine, is beloved by his parishioners because he really does think they're all God's children. But in the bleak autumn of 1959, more than a year after the death of his wife, Tyler is still awash in grief. The man who once held them rapt from the pulpit now appears ridiculous up there--"like a big tractor being driven by a teenage kid, slipping in and out of gear"--and his daughter has started screaming...

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