Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout
|
List Price: Our Price: $2.97 You Save: $12.03 (80%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Olive Kitteridge
Book Review: Hells Bells
Summary: 4 Stars
Hells Bells is often the response of Olive Kitteridge to comments or actions that she feels are irrelevant or unimportant. Strout is an excellent technical writer with the ability to weave these short stories together about the residents of Çrosby, Maine. Suicide is the main theme so you know that not much happiness prevails. Strout shows extreme sympathy to Olive's long-suffering husband, Henry, who is the kind, considerate husband, father, pharmacist and friend. Olive only seems to miss him when he enters a depressing nursing home and she is alone. Strout does state via Olive that one cannot live with loneliness. It is her overpowering message and yet Olive suffers from loneliness which, unfortunately, she brought on herself.
All the other characters transcending these short stories are clear, concise and flawed. Olive's son Christopher has no joy and the other characters seems to succumb to destiny without much fight. Denise, one of the earlier characters, who worked in Henry's pharmacy, was smart and kind, yet life handed her tragedy and she seemed to accept the pain without much fight. Strout has the uncanny ability to use Olive is each story and her influence or reaction to incidents often remind me of Anne Tyler - outwardly simple people who are very complicated. Strout is of equal talent.
Olive is physically a big woman who easily passes giant judgments on many of the townsfolk but she, too, cannot control her son's happiness or create her own peace. I found most of the characters intelligent and many were highly educated which gave credibility to the novel and did not insult their life choices. Unfortunately, depression and loneliness led many to confirm Olive's mantra: "hells bells."
Book Review: Winesburg meets Crosby, ME; fiction for thinking adults
Summary: 5 Stars
Crosby, ME, is Winesburg, OH, brought up to date, only better. This is such a decidedly five-star book it needs a higher classification. I read Strout's Amy and Isabelle a while back and thought at the time that fiction just doesn't get much better than this. Then I read Olive Kitteredge and found out I was wrong. Strout's fiction just keeps getting better. Olive and Henry and all the other characters in this collection of stories are so very real, so very human that I found it hard to believe this was fiction. Strout has a knack for getting inside other people's heads and hearts - all kinds of people of either sex, children and adults alike. Her skill simply boggles my mind. The character of Olive is the axis for all of the other lives created here, and she is perhaps one of the most fully realized and memorable folks fiction has had to offer in many years. She's not very nice, and yet she is. She is a monster of sorts, and yet she's not. She doesn't appreciate her kind-hearted long-suffering husband, and yet, finally, she does. She seems too mean to ever be lonely, and yet, finally, she is. I found myself rooting for Olive and Jack as I read the final story, "River," and thought of the Biblical thing that tells us it's not good for man to be alone. God help ya, Jack Kennison, because I think Olive might, in her loneliness, learn to love you. I am hoping now, without much hope, that Elizabeth Strout might give us more of Olive Kitteredge in another book. (I'm old enough to appreciate a book about love and septuagenarians.) In the meantime, here I go thinking it again. Fiction can't get any better than this book, Olive Kitteredge. - Tim Bazzett, author of the Reed City Boy trilogy and Love, War & PolioBook Review: The Portrait of Mrs. Olive Kitteridge
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the story of Olive Kitteridge, a retired married school teacher in Maine, written in the form of highlights and turning-points in her life as the years progress. Many readers will, with some validity, interpret this novel as a collection of short stories where Mrs. Kitteridge, for the most part is the central character while the people close to her, and in her midst, are exquisitely described by Ms. Strout. We are also given wonderful insight into Olive Kitteridge's inner thoughts and she is a power to be reckoned with. You may have met someone like her before. The reader may find her overbearing, cold, be infuriated by her political views and wish her to Hades. Such complex and forceful individuals, however, can make for very solid, realistic and pragmatic friends. They are compassionate in the true sense of the word, and never maudlin or sentimental. They are not going to give you gifts of chocolates and teddy-bears, but they can be life-savers without being dramatic in the process and, of course, they have a lot of strength of character. Throughout the thirteen chapters of her portrayal of this strong yet vulnerable and anxious woman, Ms. Strout remains wonderfully consistent in describing her as well as other characters in her novel in different age groups, and she provides the reader with anecdotes that never disappoint. They are ironic, at times very funny and sometimes downright sobering while never dreary or maudlin. Beautifully written by Ms. Strout, there is not a false note to be found in this brilliant novel. It is an honest book, both entertaining and instructive in many ways. Congratulations to Ms. Strout for producing this masterpiece. It is a treasure.Book Review: Beautiful Story; Wrong Format
Summary: 4 Stars
I enjoyed reading this book but I wish it was written as a novel rather than a collection of short stories. As much as I enjoyed getting to know Olive, who reminded me a great deal of my own mother, I would have liked to learn more about her son, Christopher, and her lovely and sympathetic husband, Henry. And of course about Olive herself! I was left with something to be desired in that department.
The short stories, though beautifully written, were distracting. For example, the multiple stories whose characters went to school where Olive taught were redundant and hardly served Olive's own story. It would have been better if they were combined into one minor storyline in a novel about Olive Kitteridge and her family.
Having said that, I found some of the other characters in those short stories equally compelling. Harmon, the hardware store owner, was especially real to me. The Houltons were beautiful and the Larkins were pitiful. Angela O'Meara's story was also viscerally painful.
In the end, Elizabeth Strout wrote thirteen captivating human stories whose common thread is Olive Kitteridge--a big boned, big-mouthed math teacher with a fascinating and colorful personality. Interested so far? Get this book!
The imagery throughout the book was vivid with detailed descriptions like, "She had not looked up. Her fingers were long. Her plain gold band, loose behind the knuckles, caught the sun with each rip." The dialogue and pace were also pretty spot-on.
So if you like short stories about older, married New Englanders and their lives, scandals and heartbreaks, definitely read this book. Otherwise, it will put you to sleep.
Book Review: Complex, Well-Written Insights
Summary: 5 Stars
Elizabeth Strout's novel is a series of short stories revealing dynamics and truths of small town life. It revolves around Olive Kitteridge, a retired seventh grade math teacher. She lives in Crosby, Maine with a husband and only son. She is 72 years old and described as large, overpowering, and stubborn woman.
Thirteen stories, each a chapter, show a unique character, and nuanced viewpoints revealing Olive from many angles. She has to face many life changes, including her husband's illness and death. Her son moves away and we see Olive as more loving and complex than her public personality. In one chapter she is sitting in church and happy, feeling life was a gift "that one of those things about getting older was knowing so many moments weren't just moments, they were gifts."
In most of the chapters, Olive is key to the story, other chapters she just steps in and out of several townspeople's lives. I found those less fulfilling than when Olive was the star. The characters enable the reader to step into their shoes, experience an emotion that rings true and reveals a common humanity. It quietly gives an honest note of wisdom, that in understanding others, we understand ourselves. We can walk in another man's shoes and give them credit for doing the best they can.
The novel is somewhat dark in bringing to the surface our dark and dangerous sides for honest examination. Life is not always happy and facing the stark truth of reality is just a way we learn respect people's viewpoints, although we may not be able to stand them.
Well written and deserving of the Pulitzer Prize it won.