“Snow Blind” and “Gift” were the last two stories in Elizabeth Strout’s Anything is Possible. “Gift” tells the story of the Applebys directly after hearing about Annie from Dottie at her bed and breakfast. The point of view in this story is different than many of the other stories that stayed tethered to a single character. In “Gift” the story did not stay with one character the entire time. I think it works for the story, though, since it is focusing on the way the family is dealing with their father’s homosexuality and each character is responding differently to it.

Charlene is an interesting foil to Annie as is the comparison between their two fathers.  I think Strout handled that really well as well. She alerted the reader to what was going on without coming right out and saying it and without Charlene having to say it, which would have felt untrue. The different plot lines added depth as well to the story. There was a lot going on. There were other relationships that are causing tension as well, like Annie’s relationship with her mother. The family dynamics are strange but interesting.   

Annie was very different than she had been portrayed in the previous story, which seems to be true of most characters when their star in the own story. We find out much more about them and they are never what they seem to be to the rest of the world.

Time was handled in an interesting way in this story. It covers large amounts of time, focusing on a few key moments, jumping through a lot of Annie’s life.

“Gift” continues previous themes of poverty and class with the character of Abel. Abel is an interesting character because he represents multiple classes throughout his life and is judged very harshly as coming from money. A lot of Strout’s stories are dark in the ways in which characters are dealing with problems but this story almost seemed headed in the direction of a horror film for a moment.

My favorite thing about this story was how vividly I could see the man in the theater, his body language, his personality, his way of being. I thought he was really well-done as a character.

As I was reading this story, I was wondering why Strout chose to place it last in the collection of short stories. It embodied several themes that we’ve noticed throughout the book, but I would love to hear what other people thought about the placement of the stories within the book.