Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout
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Book Summary Information
Author: Elizabeth StroutEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-09-30
ISBN: 0812971833
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780812971835
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Olive Kitteridge
Book Review: Autumnal Tints
Summary: 4 Stars
Elizabeth Strout's work, "Olive Kitteridge," is foremost a contemplation of autumn. "Foolish, foolish spring," Olive pouts in the chapter, "River". "For five days it rained. Harsh and heavy- so much for spring. This rain was cold and autumnal..."
"Olive Kitteridge" is a compilation of 13 vignettes, which span over 30 years. The first chapter, "Pharmacy", captures Olive and her husband, Henry, riddled with middle-age anxieties and the demands of raising their young son, Christopher. The stories petal through time, as the Kitteridge family and the community around them grow old and wrestle with life in all its pain and glory. Empty-nesters, waning sexual drives, distempered grandchildren, and nostalgia for youth abound in this collection of portraits about small-town Crosby, Maine.
The protagonist Olive Kitteridge is a hulking, compassionate, strong-minded, and straight-shooting school teacher, who appears in both leading and peripheral roles throughout the book. The effect of the novel's layered portraits, painted from various points of view, is a touching portrayal of a town and its inhabitants.
Crosby unfolds through the fir trees and rocky Maine coast as does Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha out of the burnt-orange clay and swamps of the Mississippi delta. Strout, like Faulkner, uses nuanced prose to weave a quilt colored with the shades of human anguish. To Strout, it is these moments of anguish, and the quiet torrent of ordinary, daily life that surrounds them, which contribute most to the imperfect, sad, and enduring fabric of life in a close-knit community.
In the chapter "Winter Concert" the reader meets the couple of Jane and Bob Houlton. "Because what did they have, except for each other...?" the omniscient narrator concludes. The Houlton's, faced with oncoming winter, are lost. This cliff of anxiety is the product of Bob and Jane, in their 70's, still being married, despite Bob's decade-long affair with a woman down in Florida. "It's that we're running out of time," Jane had said to Bob earlier at the concert. A simple winter concert becomes a personal moment of deep, deep anguish.
Strout's stories capture their autumnal tints with a painterly quality. Through the great restraint of their author, the stories emerge as a tapestry of melancholy, which evoke the muted colors, powerful symbolism, and deep emotion of an Edvard Munch canvas. In the chapter "Incoming Tide," the character Kevin Coulson, contemplates suicide from the driver-side seat of his truck, as he stares out at the ocean. "Through the windshield he saw the waves coming in higher now, hitting the ledge in front of the marina hard enough to send a spray far into the air, the spray then falling back languidly, the drops sifting through shards of sunlight that still cracked its way between the dark clouds."
There is a lot of light splashing through water and glass in "Olive Kitteridge." The light reminds the reader of his or her omniscient point of view. "Look," Strout is saying, "at all the points of view. See what the characters don't." While Olive and the other characters of Crosby are often oblivious to the light, Strout hopes that at least her readers are not.
Elizabeth Strout was born in 1956, so she wrote much of "Olive Kitteridge" when she was in her late 40's. Many of the chapters appeared in "The New Yorker" before their compilation into a book. It is rare for such a touching look at the twilight of life to come from someone still so young. Or is it?
"There was beauty to that autumn air, and the sweaty young bodies that had mud on their legs, strong young men, who would throw themselves forward to have the ball smack against their foreheads; the cheering when a goal scored, the goalie sinking to his knees," Olive thinks in the chapter called "Tulips".
This memory of life in her 40's overwhelms Olive, as she now in her 70's thinks of her husband and his recent stroke. The springy chapter title is juxtaposed to the story's autumnal theme. A reminder that one of the few things we can do in the face of death is plant bulbs. "There were days- [Olive] could remember this- when Henry would hold her hand as they walked home, middle-aged people, in their prime. Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful? Most likely not. People mostly did not know enough when they were living that they were living it." Strout is today about the age Olive was walking away from that soccer game with Henry. Strout is teaching herself. "Wake up!" she is yelling in her own ear. "Don't wish to be anywhere but here."
When I read Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking," The Year of Magical ThinkingI can remember telling my mom that she simply must read it. "Not for me," my mother replied. "I guess it hits too close too home." I was twenty-two at the time and my mother in her 50's. Perhaps, it is easier to make sense of autumn from the boughs of spring. Perhaps in autumn the winter blinds us with fear. For in Olive Kitteridge, all the characters seem to march forward, headlong into their existential battles, unaware of their angst.
Although, this makes sense, because a confrontation with death's realities can be a daunting experience. But when experienced through the truth and beauty that unfolds in a book like "Olive Kitteridge," the reader cannot help but to swim to that truth as to a red buoy, glistening in the sea of life as it tumbles under the darkness of twisted logic. Because Strout finds beauty in an ordinary we all know, and unfurls it with masterly restraint, she teaches not only herself, but the reader as well, the bright lessons of autumn.
Summary of Olive Kitteridge
At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn?t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive?s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life?sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty. Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition?its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires.
Praise for Olive Kitteridge:
?Perceptive, deeply empathetic . . . Olive is the axis around which these thirteen complex, relentlessly human narratives spin themselves into Elizabeth Strout?s unforgettable novel in stories.?
?O: The Oprah Magazine
?Fiction lovers, remember this name: Olive Kitteridge. . . . You?ll never forget her. . . . [Elizabeth Strout] constructs her stories with rich irony and moments of genuine surprise and intense emotion. . . . Glorious, powerful stuff.?
?USA Today
?Funny, wicked and remorseful, Mrs. Kitteridge is a compelling life force, a red-blooded original. When she?s not onstage, we look forward to her return. The book is a page-turner because of her.?
?San Francisco Chronicle
?Olive Kitteridge still lingers in memory like a treasured photograph.?
?Seattle Post-Intelligencer
?Rarely does a story collection pack such a gutsy emotional punch.?
?Entertainment Weekly
?Strout animates the ordinary with astonishing force. . . . [She] makes us experience not only the terrors of change but also the terrifying hope that change can bring: she plunges us into these churning waters and we come up gasping for air.?
?The New Yorker
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