Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout
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Book Reviews of Olive Kitteridge
Book Review: Small Town Sketches
Summary: 4 Stars
Many people have recommended this book to me, and it won the Pulitzer for heaven's sake, but I'm afraid I lost interest in it well before the middle, and it took an effort to keep reading. This is not to say it's bad -- in fact, it is very good indeed for what it does. But it is essentially small in scale, and does not address many of the qualities that I look for in fiction.
Elizabeth Strout writes very well indeed, but which I mean the kind of writing that always describes what she means exactly without every calling attention to itself; there are many colors here, but not a hint of purple -- something that would be unthinkable in Downeast Maine. For that is where these stories are set, in the small coastal town of Crosby. The first story features the owner of the local pharmacy, Henry Kitteridge. His wife Olive, the junior-high math teacher and an altogether less genial presence, hovers in the background, but she will flit in and out for the rest of the book. She is hard to like, in fact downright ornery at times, but my goodness she is real. So are many of the other inhabitants of Crosby, some of whom crop up in several stories, some only once. All around, as the stories themselves jump around in time, though primarily addressing the lonely retirement years, Strout builds up a believable portrait of the community and its inhabitants.
But its overall impression is of small events happening to small people in a small town. Actually, I admired the lack of action in the first story, a sensitive probing of the soft spot in his heart that Henry keeps for his former pharmacy assistant, now moved away and the mother of grown children. I was stirred by the magnificently transformative ending of the second story, and kept looking for more things of a similar quality to happen. But as they didn't and the book went on at its level of petty gossip and private tragedy, I found myself ready to scream. The people seemed authentic, and no doubt their concerns meant a great deal to them, but I found myself getting increasingly alienated.
People who have recommended this have referred to it as a story-novel, much in the manner of Tom Rachman's THE IMPERFECTIONISTS. But the publishers, I see, do not use the word "novel" anywhere, which is good because I have yet to be convinced that the form works. But nor do they market it as a story collection, implying that it builds to something greater than the sum of its parts. Just as Sherwood Anderson had done (I think better) in his 1919 classic, WINESBURG, OHIO, you do end up knowing more about the inhabitants of Crosby, Maine, than you did at the beginning. But I found it hard to care about most of them except when they were in the momentary spotlight. So the successive stories blurred the focus rather than sharpening it. But maybe that's just me.
Book Review: Depressing but Poignant [P 2010]
Summary: 4 Stars
In the 1950's and 1960's literature was abound with male midlife or other life crisis characters. Rabbit Angstrom of Rabbit, Run, Julian English of Appointment in Samarra, and many others. This century, the growth of such characters in the feminine gender grows to explain some of the complex frustrations underlying the woman of modern society -- which includes the least loved and most despised option of womanhood: antagonistic children who do not love them.
Olive Kitteridge is such a woman whose personal problems -- those associated with her successfully suicidal father -- erupt into well overnuturing motherhood for her only son. His ultimate result is to become a lad of few words and little love (for her). Alienation of those around her in the small town's confines (of small Maine) in which this novel revolves become the constant echo chamber. She is haunted by her lack of reciving love from those within as well as outsie of her family. Gossip growing on other gossip erupts to become an almost unanimous statement of the town: we love your husband for being the saint to put up with you.
In spite of this truth or these truths, Kitteridge is a success as her son is a podiatrist whose famiy may be eclectic but in apparent good spirits. But he, like most anyone alive on the earth, resolves to leave the confines of the little town in Maine where he must endure being her son and confined by the few hurting feet in its community which couold scarcely deliver a successful practice to him.
While she ages, Olive does learn that the loneliness -- although self created -- is more compounded by her delivery of the antagonist ways to others for decades. She had a good friend -- her husband. But, he precedes her to death or practical death. And, being left without him is the loneliness she suffers as her husband, like most spouses in a good marriage, is more than a love -- he is her best friend. And, we learn again that Olive can succeed. In regard to marriage, she again is a success. It is the others -- those who criticize her -- who are failing and philandering. It is the loss of spouse that erodes her being. These portions of the book remind me so much of the cinema's success with Away from Her.
If you can handle the depressing topic(s) which is (are) well written, read this book. If you want a light read, avoid this book.
But, like somany of the novels of the 1950's amd 1960's which touch upon topics which most would not like to address, this book confronts middle aged syndrome and the latent and patent problems associated with the same. It teaches, but is not didactic. This won a Pulitzer for reason(s).
Book Review: A Crank To Love
Summary: 5 Stars
Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout
Book Review by Jay Gilbertson
Before I begin, let me send out a public apology for not acknowledging the local illustrator of the last book I reviewed: A Christmas Memory. Beth Peck, from Menomonie, has illustrated many children and young adult books and I am a nudge for not giving her due credit for her incredible illustrations!
***
Not normally drawn to this genre of work, it took me a couple of goes to get into the rhythm of author Strout's collection of thirteen short stories. Then I realized there was a uniting thread; Olive Kitteridge herself, and I was hooked.
Early on, you learn that this crabby, moody, overweight and often times angry old woman is someone you know. You look forward to her clunking her way through the kaleidoscope of stories all set in Crosby, Maine, wondering how much of you she's like, knowing deep down, more than you want to admit. That's author Strout's gift, it's what she does really well and nearly without the reader knowing. She shows you life and it isn't always pretty.
With cleverly placed characters, Strout moves Olive forward in time and whisks the reader along at break-neck speed often running voices together, which I found annoying. Especially the author's love of ending a great many sentences with the same word; `really,' I wanted a red pen.
"...how the girl had no idea, as she plunked down their mugs of coffee, that her own arm would someday be sprinkled with age spots...that life picked up speed, and then most of it was gone--made you breathless, really."
Nearly all thirteen stories are an illumination of the three d's (death, divorce & disease) and Strout uses Olive in a refreshing way as a mirror of what many of us will ultimately experience, or perhaps already have. Though this is the job of a good writer, I'm tempted to use the word `great' because for once the reader isn't made to suffer along the way, instead we're presented with various situations and then left to decide how would we have behaved?
One story I was particularly drawn to; "The Piano Player," due to its bitter-sweet character and how believably she faced something we've all chassed through our heart; regret.
"...Angie, leaning her head now against the hallway wall, fingering her black skirt, felt she had figured something out too late, and that must be the way of life, to get something figured out when it was too late..."
Though this collection, and Olive in particular, may not haunt you for days like some I've read, it will be a revealing peek into the notion that we are all puzzles and no one knows anyone all the way through...
Book Review: Dark but unforgettable...
Summary: 5 Stars
The book is a collection of 13 stories about life in the small coastal town of Crosby, Maine where the author shares the lives of ordinary citizens over the course over 30 years - the ups, the downs, the grief, the tragedies and the disappointments. Olive Kitteridge, a retired school teacher, is at the center of a number of the stories and a bit actor in others - yet the author is able to marvelously tie the mosaic into a full and complete picture of Olive. Both Olive and her husband Henry were raised by a parent who was psychologically "impaired" - while Olive grew up to be dark, wary and cantankerous - Henry matured to be a breath of fresh air seeing all that was positive in life - -
"Henry Kitteridge was different...whenever she saw him, it was like moving into a warm pocket of air."
While I'm not a fan of short stories, this book will be impossible to forget. It is a "dark" series of stories - touching on emotional struggles, aging, death, fear, insecurity, loneliness, loss, psychological instability - and yet, when the moment of human connection or "greediness to live" turn up, it is like a jolt of lightening that awakens one's senses.
You move into the mind and body of Olive as she bounces from distress, pity, profound loneliness and back to thirsting for life. Some of my favorite passages on:
Aging...
"the sullen young waitress always giving their senior discount even though they never asked; they had joked about that--how the girl had no idea, as she plunked down their mugs of coffee, that her own arm would someday be sprinkled with age spots, or that cups of coffee had to be planned since blood pressure medicine made you widdle so much, that life picked up speed, and then most of it was gone--made you breathless, really."
On her loneliness without Henry...
Two, five, then seven years passed by--and in the case of Olive Kitteridge, she found herself positively squeezed to death by an unendurable sense of loneliness.
On need for Love and human connection ...
"What young people didn't know, she thought, lying down beside this man, his hand on her shoulder, her arm; oh, 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 to be tossed away carelessly, as if it were a tart on a platter with others that got passed around again. No, if love was available, one chose it, or didn't choose it. And if her platter had been full with the goodness of Henry and she had found it burdensome, had flicked it off crumbs at a time, it was because she had not known what one should know: that day after day was unconsciously squandered."
Terrific book...
Book Review: Life through the lens of Olive....
Summary: 4 Stars
13 stories interweave in this award-winning novel and the relationships or lack of them permeate the emotional equilibrium of the diverse and troubled characters that we meet.
Time and place are important to this novel. A rather cool New England sensibility resides in the characters, many of who seem unable to move beyond their staid reserve. Communication is often lacking or guarded, but is propelled along in their actions and within situations. Most of the stories are cheerless and somber, but a good deal of humor creeps around to relieve the tension. Some fail and some prevail to find their way through to accept life's struggles, but hope continues to surface in much of the narrative.
Olive Kitteridge is a curiously complex person. She sways alternately between cruelty and compassion. Olive is a puzzle and through her, I believe, we all take away that recognition of how humanity is composed of many conundrums.
We are all enigmas to be experienced in different ways within ourselves and from the eyes and experiences of those who touch our lives and in turn are touched by us.
We see her doing something deplorable in one story and then in another she seemingly saves a life. She is cold, distant and indifferent in many instances, but in others, the hard edges soften into compassionate awareness.
We can't be fully known, only understood in moments and actions we present to others and ourselves. A general picture may be formed, but the human psyche is too complex to cast itself in stone.
This novel attests to the mystery that is life itself... why do we behave certain ways? What are the things that motivate and irritate us? How do we see ourselves differently than others perceive us? Can we even ever fully really know all facets of our personalities?
I believe that Olive's character shows us that self-knowledge is elusive and fragmented. People appear basically incapable of seeing themselves as a whole. Each one of us brings diversity to the table and sees life through a very personal and unique lens...a lens formed through our natural temperament molded by our unparalleled and incomparable life experiences.
In this small town of Crosby, Maine, loneliness is the predominant theme... loneliness or the all too pervasive fear of it.
In Olive's own words ...
"Hell. We're always alone. Born alone. Die alone."
The writing is dense, intelligent, and tightly drawn with a great writer's talent for telling emotionally large stories in small vivid clusters.
As the novel draws to a close, we are reminded that there is always hope and that we are never too old for surprises in life.
You may not like Olive, but I'm pretty sure that you'll not soon forget her!