Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout
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Book Reviews of Olive Kitteridge
Book Review: Hope, Loneliness & Olive Kitteridge
Summary: 5 Stars
I begin with a quote from the 2008 Pulitzer Prize winning Olive Kitteridge: Fiction by Elizabeth Strout:
"...then Olive felt something she had not expected to feel again: a sudden surging greediness for life...She remembered what hope was, and this was it. That inner churning that moves you forward, plows you through life the way the boats below plowed the shiny water, the way the plane was plowing forward to a place new, and where she was needed."
Restoring hope is crucial for couples who fear they've lost their way, for an individual with profound grief who's lost the most important person in their life, or someone who experiences panic attacks for the first time and feels overwhelmingly out-of-control or for all of us who suffer from the loneliness that's part of the human condition. Olive Kitteridge: Fiction is a luminous novel that captures the very nature of what it means to be human. The author's wisdom about regrets, anger, guilt, wounded souls and the weariness and hardships of life are worth re-reading several times. Six of the interwoven stories were published previously from 1992-2007. This book was worth the wait because there is a layering of characters that has a depth developed with the gift of time.
There are two sides of hope which Olive is keenly aware of. Hope is crucial to endure hardship. Also hope is often disappointment delayed (as Carl Whitaker family therapist used to say). Olive is not one to be surprised by disappointment and she lives her life expecting it's daily arrival.
Like all difficult people Olive has her strengths. She can recognize her own hard truths; "My son hates me, too." or " She hated the scared part of herself." Her honesty combined with her meanness create an unforgettable three dimensional character. This is a book where the truth of it grabs you and brings tears to your eyes. I re-read the last five pages at least five times. It is a book rich in capturing both the gratitude and struggle of life and asks you not to "squander" your days on this earth. Olive's learning's about her mistakes become etched in our memories as if they are our own.
Her loneliness is palpable. There aren't enough books that capture the profound nature of loneliness which is such a huge part of so many people's lives. We are so selfishly unaware in America that we don't take time to introduce single people to each other, whatever their age. In a couple when they lose respect for each other, and disdain begins to crumble their alliance, it can be a terribly lonely place. Ultimately, Olive pays that price because her yawning mouth of hunger and needs obscures seeing the good man beside her and recognizing who her son really is. The author knows the truth, that couples who don't respect each other are on the lonely path to life without sex. Olive Kitteridge boils the terror of loneliness down to it's essence. She represents some of our worst fears for ourselves and she is redeemed by hope to embrace life yet again.
So much that is popular lacks substance. Elizabeth Strout has taken her time to write a remarkable book jammed full of substance. Her writing is elegant. She is brilliant because she asks you to consider what is lyrical about life while acknowledging the hardships. It is one of the top three books of my life.
Book Review: Love, Loss, and Aging
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a remarkably powerful collection of 13 linked short stories about the residents of the small town of Crosby, Maine, including the eponymous Olive Kitteridge, who appears at least briefly in each story. The short story form allows the author to introduce a large number of characters, and her talent is in richly developing so many of them even when they appear only in a single story. But it is Olive who is portrayed most fully; she emerges as one of the most complicated, interesting, and realistic characters I've encountered in a novel in many years. Olive can be harsh and abrupt, and she's not one to coddle herself or anyone else. When a neighbor says of a new widow "She's such a nice woman. It isn't right," Olive, true to form, thinks that this is "such a stupid thing to say. Stupid--this assumption people have, that things should somehow be right." Yet Olive can also be deeply, achingly tender, as she is in her interactions with an anorexic young woman who she tries to heal, or with the crazed mother of criminal son whose taunts cut right through Olive's protective layers, or in her relationship with her own son, whom she fiercely loves, but who pushes her away in response to her years of overbearance.
Recurring throughout the book are depictions of Olive's long marriage to her husband Henry. Their love is deep and abiding, despite both of their forming romantic attachments to others during the course of their years together. Indeed, the opening story, which tells of Henry's growing infatuation with the young woman he employs at his pharmacy, is one of the most moving in the book, matched perhaps by the final story, which takes place many years later, after Henry has died. In it, Olive meets and becomes shyly attracted to a new widower. As they consummate their relationship, Olive thinks "What young people did not know. They did not know that lumpy, aged, and wrinkled bodies were as needy as their own young, firm ones, that love was not be tossed away carelessly, as if it were a tart on a platter with others that get passed around again. No, if love was available, one chose it, or didn't choose it."
As this last quote illustrates, while the stories in this book take place over a period of 30 years, it is at its core, an account of later life. Not many authors who write so unflinchingly about middle and old age, and Strout reminds me in many ways of one of the few who does, Wallace Stegner. "The Spectator Bird," with its emphasis on the emotional degradation of old age and the counterbalancing satisfactions of a long, if complicated, marriage, has thematic parallels "Olive Kitteridge."
This is a terribly depressing book, in which the characters suffer from the suicide of loved ones, marital infidelity, anorexia, offspring who reject them, fiancés who abandon them, severe disability following a stroke, even a traumatic hostage-taking episode--and of course, from all that goes along with simply getting old. Strout does not sugar-coat any of her character's responses to these events, but neither is she maudlin: not just Olive's, but all of her characters' reactions--what they say, do, and think--are rich, complex, and in the end, strikingly believable.
Book Review: A series of short stories that give a deper look at one womans own story
Summary: 3 Stars
Olive is a big woman... she is big boned, big faced... and a big presence in the lives that surrounds hers. A retired math teacher in Crosby Maine... Olive bowls people over like a bowling ball heading for a strike. She is abrupt, judgmental, and not the person you stop in announced for a chat or a cup of coffee.
Yet in this series of short stories by Elizabeth Strout, Olive plays a part in every one... sometimes large, and sometimes she is merely acknowledged by another character or by a hand wave.... and as the stories unfold around Olive's home town.... we get a glimpse of who Olive may really be.
As I read this book I found myself at first confused. The stories seemed choppy... little glimpses - but of what. A bit of Olive here.... a bit of Olive there.... many characters were introduced and in times it was their story that held the chapter, their tale of - well, tragic life mostly.... and yet, somewhere there was still Olive.
It took me more than a few chapters to get the flow of the book and even then.... I am not sure if I truly did or I just became used to the way this book was put together. What I felt we were seeing was not the whole story - and for that I give Elizabeth Strout much credit. I dislike a book that spells it out for me, preferring to have something to figure out while I read. I believe this was Elizabeth's goal - to give the reader a glimpse - but left much to the imagination. Who was Olive - really? This complicated woman, this woman who for most of book I did not even really like.... but I did want to figure her out.
There are moments when Olive (with help from our author) speaks so beautifully - so deeply that I am left with words that I want to post somewhere as reminders.... one such phrase came out of the short story 'Starving":
When Olive is confronted with an anorexic girl, Nina, this conversation takes place:
Olive finished the donut, wiped the sugar from her fingers, sat back and said, "You're starving."
The girl didn't move, only said, "Uh... duh."
"I'm starving too," Olive said. "Why do you think I eat everything in sight?"
"You're not starving," Nina says with disgust.
"Sure I am. We all are."
"Wow," Nina said, Heavy."
Moments like that in the book caused me to see a bit behind their thin veil that covered the real Olive.
In the end... I can't say I felt I really knew Olive Kitterling, but I think I had an idea. Elizabeth Strout does write a compelling story and I give her a ton of credit as while at times I found this book difficult to read and follow, I can imagine that writing such a multi layered book, folding one chapter into another had to be pretty complicated in itself and Elizabeth Strout does a fine job doing so in a writing style that gave me pause - in a good, thought-provoking way.
*If you read this book - do make time to read the interview in the back of the book with Elizabeth Strout and Olive Kitteridge. It is hilarious and I think it will give you some additional insight to Olive.
Book Review: The Balzac of Boothbay Harbor
Summary: 4 Stars
Normally, I don't read short stories and prefer longer fiction for the substance that I find there. Short stories tend to rely heavily upon character description in each story and so they tend to be overly burdened by awkward introductions and they struggle, often painfully, to overcome superficiality and artifice. Reading a book of short stories can seem a bit like going to a large party of people whom you don't know and bouncing from one introduction to the next without really learning much of consequence about anyone. However, Olive Kitteridge was pleasantly different in that Elizabeth Strout enables Olive to connect nearly all of the characters in her novel. Olive unifies the short stories to become a novel as she wanders in upon other characters by visiting, observing and sometimes by chance just stumbling upon them. This literary technique was used aptly by Balzac who connected many of characters of his novels so that the characters of one book would meet in another novel. The sum total of his character-driven novels interconnected to become a literary community in his Human Comedy. Balzac's characters often assumed different personalities from novel to novel as the views of the same person were seen differently by different characters in Parisian society. Faulkner built Yawknapathophwa County in Mississippi by populating his novels in a way similar to Strout's portraits of the people of Crosby on the Maine Coast. So Strout's invention made this novel comprised of short stories really work for me in a genre that I had purposely avoided. Since Olive was in the storyline from beginning to end, I felt that I had come to know quite well and admire her. The portrait work by Strout is highly vivid and realistic as her characters assume a living quality, which only a skilled novelist can draw credibly. The characters are unique and each of them is struggling to overcome the wounds of battle among the diverse challenges of quotidian or everyday life -- challenges emerging from love, family, health, addicition, work, loneliness, aging, temptation and death. Strout has found in the good people of Crosby a cross-section of ordinary life and she follows them as if she were someone who cared about them and was always by their sides. Olive endures daunting, humbling, heartbreaking hardships without giving up hope and keeping the faith that ultimately life is worthwhile. Strout's dialogue is brash and, at times, vulgar but when her characters speak, you can hear the words as well as read them and they give "street cred" to her characters. The humble people of Crosby are living, breathing souls. They remind me of people whom I know and life really is a long walk down an avenue populated by intriguing people, some of whom you get to know well and even love, and others who by fate or mishap or the quotidian pressures of time are soon forgotten. A case could be made that life is substantially no more or less than the sum of the people who chance to walk into and out of your life over the years. Olive Kitteridge is a very fine and accessible novel in which Strout has made an inventive contribution to the genre. I think you'll enjoy reading this one.Book Review: "Love was not to be tossed away carelessly."
Summary: 3 Stars
Elizabeth Strout's "Olive Kitteridge" is a compilation of thirteen stories, all set in rural Maine. The various tales touch on a variety of characters who are loosely connected by their somewhat tenuous relationship with Olive Kitteridge. Olive is a crusty, judgmental, and blunt woman who was a much feared teacher in the local middle school for thirty-two years. She is married to mild-mannered Henry, a kindly pharmacist who prides himself on catering to each customer's needs and adding a personal touch to every transaction. In the first and possibly the best chapter, Strout focuses on Henry's friendship with his new assistant, Denise, a sweet and personable newlywed who is as solicitous of Henry's customers as he is. Olive dismisses Denise as a simpleton and "the plainest child I have ever seen." Actually, Denise is extremely bright and capable, but Olive's sour disposition and tunnel vision keep her from assessing people objectively. She never hesitates to unleash a stream of invective whenever the mood strikes her.
Other chapters feature many unhappy individuals, such as an alcoholic pianist who is involved with a married man; a despondent psychiatrist in training; an aging gentleman who longs for physical and emotional companionship; a mentally ill woman who rarely leaves her home; a grieving widow; and a girl who is jilted on her wedding day. Does this sound extraordinarily depressing? Well, it is. Although Strout has a smooth literary style and great compassion for the world's outcasts, her stories (which were written over a number of years) lack cohesion. We no sooner become invested in one character when he or she disappears into the ether. Olive, Henry, and her son do return, but their reemergence does nothing to relieve the novel's gloom.
"Olive Kitteridge" is about missed opportunities, lack of communication, bad luck, psychological distress, loneliness, and regret. The author heartbreakingly explores the defenses that we erect in order to protect ourselves from facing the truth. Unfortunately, no matter how hard we try to hide from ourselves, sooner or later we must take a long, hard look in the mirror. Strout's protagonists have a number of bitter pills to swallow: Their children resent them. Their marriages have become monotonous and unsatisfying. As they get older, they have nothing to look forward to except decrepitude and death. At one point, someone says, "To love and be loved is the most important thing in life." Unfortunately, those who have no family, friends, or satisfying work may be destined to spend their days alone and forlorn. Nature is oblivious to our suffering: "The tulips died, the trees turned red, the leaves fell off, the trees were bare, [and] snow came." As the seasons change and time passes, we have little choice but to endure whatever lies ahead. Those lucky individuals who are buoyed by religious faith, a sense of community, close relatives, and kind acquaintances may be able to avoid the frustration and sterility that make Strout's bleak landscape so forbidding.