Maine Street: Strout's newest novel, The Burgess Boys

A few observations about the very first chapters of Elizabeth Strout's novel The Burgess Boys, which are, first, that the opening chapter, in which a daughter (much like the novelist I suspect) and her mom reminisce about a family from years ago in their small Maine town, a family in which one of the sons went on to become a well-known public figure, trial lawyer recruited of OJ Simpson dream team, the other children - son and daughter - leading ordinary lives of quiet desperation - reminds me to a degree of Alice Munro, a kind of wandering recollection of life years ago in a small rural town in the remote north, as recalled years later by a female narrator who "got away"; also reminds me of Alice McDermott, in the sense of a shared community gossip that endures for generations about one of the more prominent or troubled or eccentric families in town. That said, after the prologue chapter in which the daughter/narrator decides to write this story, the one we're reading it seems, we go into a more conventional third-person narration about a family drama surround the kids in the Burgess family, the boys living in Brooklyn, the older brother a wealthy lawyer and the other sort of a misfit - a hint that he may be gay - and another hint about his troubled and childless marrige(s), they're summoned to help sister, Susan, back in Maine whose son has committed a hate-crime atrocity against a mosque serving the new immigrant community, Somalis. The younger, less responsible, much needier brother (Bob?) takes on the journey as older bro (Jim?) heads off with fam on vakay. Except for her penchant for providing great chunks of plot detail through dialogue, Strout's a really good writer and she sets this plot in motion very well - and we'll see where it leads us. All Strout roads lead to Maine, however.