Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout
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Book Reviews of Olive Kitteridge
Book Review: Songs of Experience
Summary: 5 Stars
Blake's poem "London" sums it up: "I wander throe' each charter'd street ... And mark in every face I meet, Marks of weakness, marks of woe." Substitute small-town, ingrown, petit bourgeoise Crosby Maine, and you have it.
Strout's lovely phrasing folds in layer upon layer of bitterest irony. For example, a suicidal man, watches a waitress leave a cafe and reflects: "... as she moved toward the dock, he watched her shoulders, the long back, her thin hips as she moved - she was lovely, the way a sapling might be as the afternoon sun moved over it." Only the clinically depressed could so artfully twist the knife.
Love in its many dysfunctional forms is the reader's compass: excess of love, too little love, forbidden love, fear of love, infidelity, jealousy, narcissism, etc. It is love with a wonderful unexpected twist. Strout's maladroit lovers are not cliche, fresh-faced, rash and brash, twenty-somethings. Her lover's are past middle age, retired, twice-burned, fat, angry, fearful and depressed. They are a TV watching, fast-food-eating generation who married in the 1960s, had children in the 70s, retired in the 90s, and are now fading.
Olive Kitteridge, our prickly, self-righteous heroine, finally learns her lesson: "What young people didn't know ... that love as 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." .... Her eyes were closed, and throughout her tired self swept waves of gratitude - and regret." Regret, because now lonely, she neglected her dead but loyal husband, Henry. Gratitude because in her old age she is having an affair, even though with a man both she and Henry once despised - an Harvard educated republican from New Jersey, who retired to Crosby and disdains the locals. It is advice to the young, from the old, to be disregarded. Thick and bitter irony.
Book Review: My expectations were just a bit TOO high
Summary: 3 Stars
I'm not too fond of short stories - although I did purchase this with the hopes of enjoying it since they seem to be loosely related stories with one particular character, the ubiquitous Olive Kitteridge. And as expected Olive does appear in every story in the book - sometimes just merely by name, other times it's a cameo appearance, but her presence is definitely felt throughout these vignettes into the lives of some of the residents of Crosby, Maine.
Now let me shed some light on the infamous Olive Kitteridge. Olive Kitteridge = a bit nasty, a little on the heavy side and definitely older. That description alone should give you a feel for exactly what we're dealing with here.
As you go from story to story you read about Olive, her friends, relatives and acquaintances scattered throughout Crosby, Maine. And I will confess that the stories in this book will have you thinking not just about the fictional characters Ms. Strout has created, but about your own life and that of your friends and family. These are very real life characters that you can easily associate with yourself.
With that said, sadly, I just never got around to "really" liking any of the characters. Don't take me wrong, Olive was a force like no other. When she came into a room (or a story) her presence was definitely made known. But I think it made me feel preoccupied... in the sense that I was looking forward to Olive. When was she going to enter the story? How did this person know Olive? Was she their teacher? Was she a neighbor that lived down the road? Olive, Olive, Olive. In the end, I found it to be distracting.
I honestly thought the premise was unique and clever. And, needless to say, Ms. Strout's writing is superb... but in the end it just never clicked for me. I'm not sure if that was because the stories were too short or I just had "too" high expectations for this, but sadly it just fell flat for me.
Book Review: Decent read - but not worthy of the Pulitzer
Summary: 3 Stars
I am an avid reader and enjoy the prose of a well written novel just as well as a really captivating story. ... I just didn't think this meant the definition of either. It wasn't terrible by any means. I actually could envision Olive - I have known many people with personalities that were - on the surface - nasty and negative but on the inside were quite insightful. I loved her meak and constantly positive husband, Henry. I found each chapter enjoyable with complex characters and differing stories ... BUT I had no idea as I was reading the stories that the reader was never to be rejoined with the characters later on. You received little tid bits of life stories ... literally 15 minutes to an hour of a person's life and that was it ... then onto the next story with such little interconnection that it was hard to believe all these people even lived in the same small Maine town. You know that feeling you get when a really great novel leaves you slightly hanging in the end ?... usually for effect or to leave the reader to his/her own imagination. These days, it is almost a new sort of way to prove yourself literary ... to leave a book partially finished. Well, that may very well be why Elizabeth Strout won the Pulitizer ... because you are left "hanging" at the end of every friggin' chapter. That wasn't a satisfied reading experience by any stretch of the imagination. I also spent the entire book waiting for Olive to have some epiphany or a moment of real happiness - but even up to the very last sentence, I never had one moment that I was waiting for. Lastly - there was something about Elizabeth's use of random sentences in the first couple of chapters that drove me crazy. I had no idea what sort of touret syndrome like writing would lead to such a prestigious award. It is an easy read with lots of sympathetic characters... I am glad I read it, but could think of other great works of literature that deserved the award more.Book Review: Powerful, affecting and truthful...
Summary: 5 Stars
Although technically I suppose it is a collection of inter-related stories, I regard Olive Kitteridge as a novel. And it is one of the most powerful novels that I have read recently. Of the thirteen chapters or stories in the book, I would say that ten are first-rate. Like all really good fiction it makes the reader think, and think probingly, about their own life. I certainly did. And in this case from the vantage point of age and aging, which can be a very affecting perspective indeed.
That kind of delving into your life does not always produce happy-making thoughts and feelings. It did not for me. More like one of those wake up calls that usually come from your personal life, such as the death or illness of a good friend or relative, and that leave you very introspective and searching, but usually only for a short period of time. Pretty soon you are back to the grind and your old ways.
But sharing this delving with the characters in this novel can make you feel less alone.
But back to the book. Olive and the other main characters are believeably drawn. Deeply flawed, but still attractive in many ways. Strout does not offer easy lessons and even at the book's ending, she does not reach too far for the overly simple, supposedly transformative epiphany common to lesser writers. Instead she helps us see how much compromising we do as we muddle forward. And that understanding those compromises can at least help us see how necessary they are and how bleak life would be without them.
I heartedly recommend this book. I think it will tend to be especially affecting to those of us who are past the mid-point, and must begin to weigh what it will all feel like as the end comes within sight. The sooner we weigh that matter, I suppose, the more chance we have to make it more tolerable. Perhaps that is Strout's purpose here. If so, I think she succeeds.
Book Review: Wonderful Character Study
Summary: 4 Stars
Olive Kitteridge: A Novel in Stories is, essentially, the story of the title character. However, we see the development of Olive as well as other residents of the town of Crosby, Maine through a series of vignettes or short stories (although some seem quite not short stories as they don't necessarily "conclude" nor are they necessarily self-contained in plot, character, and action, like most short stories are). Each of these stories is told from a different point of view, so we get to see Olive (and some other members of the community) from the perspective of quite a few throughout the course of the novel.
Olive comes across as kindly and perceptive at times; at others she is cruel, manipulative, and stern, and at still other times she is sadly out of touch with many in the community, specifically her own husband and son. As Strout, herself, notes in an interview with herself and the character Olive Kitteridge (which I found really odd) included in the Reader's Guide at the end of the edition I read, Olive is "a little bit of each of us"
Olive Kitteridge (also known as On the Coast of Maine--I think it may have been originally titled this) won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. I'm slightly indifferent about this book; I liked it but I didn't love it; I didn't hate it. In other words, I liked it more than I disliked it I did, however, based on Strout's previous works, expect more from it.
While Strout's descriptions and characterizations of the characters in her novel in stories are well-done--at times achingly heartbreaking and at other times spot-on funny--I found myself exceedingly irritated with Olive Kitteridge, the character, as well as with the format of the book. But finding myself exceedingly irritated with the character Olive, interesting is one of the positive aspects of the book because I think it signals just how well Strout created this complex character.