The story reveals how wounded he still is by the war, how much he aches for true love - and how much he fears not feeling pain. The Hit-Thumb Theory takes us inside Charlie's life, which is not what his admirers would expect. In several of the stories, women in Amgash admit to having crushes on Charlie Macauley, a Vietnam veteran with a reserved, gentlemanly manner. Usually paralyzingly shy, she impulsively hugged him, leaving him to wonder "how much - how little - that girl had ever been hugged." "The Barton family had been outcasts," Tommy thinks, "even in a town like Amgash, their extreme poverty and strangeness making this so." He recalls an encounter with Lucy when she was a schoolgirl and found out she was going to college. Kind-hearted Tommy still checks on middle-aged Pete, whom he remembers as a student. The story is told from the point of view of Tommy Guptill, who became a janitor for the local school after his dairy farm was destroyed by fire. It's not clear whether Pete has a mental disability or is so badly scarred by his childhood that he's never developed social skills, but he lives in isolation in his family's ramshackle farmhouse. The first, The Sign, is concerned with Lucy's younger brother, Pete. Having read My Name Is Lucy Barton will certainly enrich your understanding of this book, but it's not necessary - these stories stand on their own. Many of the stories reflect how people from her past react to it and to her fame. In this book's present Lucy has become a successful author who, in middle age, has published a memoir. Lucy Barton stands at the center of Anything Is Possible as well, although she appears in person only in Sister, the sixth of nine stories.
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