Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout
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Book Reviews of Olive Kitteridge
Book Review: Very interesting portraiture (4.5*s)
Summary: 4 Stars
This book is an unflinching, yet compassionate, look at life in a small, coastal Maine community achieved through a series of connected short stories or vignettes about a variety of situations that occur over several years. It is primarily through the life of Olive Kitteridge, a retired junior high math teacher who is central to most of the stories while only briefly appearing in others, that the author with subtle insight explores the difficulties and complexities of life.
Olive takes some getting used to, both by those she encounters in her life and by the reader. She is a large woman, whose interactions with others tend to be curt, non-diplomatic, and largely unsympathetic. Her pharmacist husband Henry is practically saintly in his forbearance of her sharpness and dismissiveness, while her son Christopher, now a podiatrist, seems to have suffered as a child from her excesses, even abuse. Yet, Olive is not without her understanding of what others are experiencing. She does show compassion for a young man thinking of taking his life, a woman who has lost her young husband, an elderly gentleman found sprawled on a walking trail, and, in a haunting story, a young, anorexic girl. There is more to Olive than is seen at first glance; she slowly comes to understand that even though the world baffles her, she "does not want to leave it yet." (270)
Not all the stories are equally compelling, but one has to say that the writing is great: it flows well, is economical and precise, and is very perceptive. It is disappointing that some of the characters, other than the Kitteridge's, do not reappear in subsequent stories, which is a testament to the author's ability to capture characters in a few pages. This work probably surpasses the author's previous efforts, which were also quite good.
Book Review: Life Hands Out a Licking
Summary: 5 Stars
4.5 stars. The setting of Elizabeth Strout's extraordinary short stories is small town Maine and the people are utterly middle class (and exclusively white or very nearly so). Small town and middle class, yes, but not in a Babbitt (Signet Classics) way.
Retired school teacher Olive Kitteridge holds center stage in most of the stories. I heard her described as `a force of nature', an apt description particularly if one pictures mostly stormy weather. It is a good thing the book consists of shorts because few readers could make it through a full book of Olive. Olive is not easy to take and yet in the stories she is a compelling figure, excruciatingly human but not quite pathetic.
As I read these stories, I kept picturing the `BIF' and `BAM' graphics on the old Batman TV series. People do get battered, seldom physically and only occasionally by Olive. Life hands out a licking. (If you're 50 and haven't figured that out yet, you may be a Panglossian or just incredibly lucky. In that case, your luck could be about to change.) And yet the people in the stories often seem quite placid, quiet, and calm - normal as normal can be. And they are, but then you find that they are dealing with one or another of our utterly human pains, sometimes physical, nearly always emotional. Children, aging, your children aging, marriages, illnesses, adulteries, suicides, insanities, accidents - they are all in here, not sensationally, but just as part of life, if you hang around long enough.
Strout's writing powerfully draws the reader into each story. I found the book to be emotionally exhausting, but very often insightful in direct and uncomplicated ways. Great stuff.
Book Review: Moving examination of life in Maine seacoast town
Summary: 4 Stars
Olive Kitteridge, a large retired math teacher, is the character who holds together this set of linked stories set in a small Maine coastal town. Olive is a no-nonsense type who speaks her mind. We also meet Henry, her kind, quiet husband and a large cast of other characters. Sometimes, Olive is at the center of the stories; sometimes she is quite peripheral. The theme that unites them, I think, is the beauty and preciousness of life, even when life is cruel and capricious.
The book, of course, is beautifully written but some of the stories work better than others. One of the very best is the last when an elderly Olive, widowed and disappointed by her son, finds a new connection with another elderly village-dweller. The first story, about the unspoken longing of a good man for a younger woman, is also very strong.
Other stories work less well but the book as a whole is never less than entrancing. If I were to voice one criticism, it is that the author has a tendency to move her characters around like pawns on a chessboard to make her point. There's a lot of violent death in this book, probably more than one would expect in such a community. People are killed off quite casually so that other may have interesting thoughts and reactions to their deaths.
The one thing that really disgusted me was in the interview with the author at the end of the book in which Olive Kitteridge is also interviewed as if she were a real person. It's like interviewing the ventriloquist's dummy for God's sake. She's fictional. Why not interview Anne Boleyn about what it was like to have her head chopped off, or Juliet about whether she regretted killing herself? Yes Olive is a fine character -- but she's not real, so let's not pretend she is.
Book Review: Poo-litzer prize, more like it.
Summary: 2 Stars
If you like relationship-oriented fiction that focuses on some of the more morose aspects of suburban life (and in so doing, evokes the effects of a tragedy or a series of tragedies), you might like this book.
If you're looking for a book with grand plot arcs, grand ideas or intellectual depth, look elsewhere.
In sum, not to my tastes (30-something male, science background). It's the first Pulitzer Prize winning book that I've found genuinely disappointing. The book is presented as a series of short stories that quickly become formulaic: introduce a group of characters, put them in a bell jar and suck out any and all means of coping with problems (for example: intellect, in-depth communication with anyone (peers, friends or professionals), any kind and any depth of organized religion (religion, in fact, as seems fashionable, gets a good mocking here), humor, etc...) then throw suburban "poo" (of mental illness, old age, nursing homes, crime, isolation) at them. Guess what happens? Tragedy (quelle surprise).
The book does succeed in some skillful, deep character sketches and in producing some catharsis after reading, however, this could have been done with half (or less) of the stories in the book. And the prose style is nothing spectacular; metaphors are fitting but not profound and few passages are worth quoting for their stylistic content.
Overall, it's disappointing that this is what is considered to be the "height" of modern literature--this "splitting of the atom" with a singular, persistent focus on relationships, and on the "garbage" of modern life ("garbage has to be the poem of our time"--A.R. Ammons). The Pulitzer Prize emblem on the cover gave me high hopes. Having those hopes dashed is why I'm giving it such a low rating.
Book Review: Think literature is dead? This book proves it's not
Summary: 5 Stars
"Birth, copulation and death. That's all the facts when you come to the brass tacks." T.S. Eliot.
To my mind the quote is what the book boils down to. I am impressed by Elizabeth Strout's writing. Simple. Direct. No flourishes. No long winded phrasing, unnecessary descriptions and the like. No need for any of that. It went straight to the heart, my heart. I was only disappointed that there were no more stories. It's been a long time since I can remember reading a work that I didn't want to see end. "Olive Kitteridge" is such a book and the kind of character that will remain with me when I think of other iconic characters in fiction. Olive epitomizes the kind of no nonsense person who can see the flaws and frailties of everyone else immediately, but it takes her a lifetime to discover her own. At least she was reflective enough to understand, to see. . .She's a woman whose class (and sometimes lack of class) is only abutted by her class consciousness. Is she wrong about things? She is at times. But there is nothing depressing about this character. She doesn't spout phrases or platitudes or whine about things and can't stand the people who do. She brims with life. She loves. She hates. She holds grudges. She demands her right to be. She believes what she believes honestly, from her gut and of course to her detriment can't always hold her tongue. Still Olive is not an irrational being though she can be uncompromising. In the end though I think she is a thoughtful, caring person with needs and of a generous nature even though she'd probably deny all that.
Bravo, Ms Strout, Pulitizer prize or not. It doesn't matter what awards you get when you can write something this good, create a character this real and be proud of it.