Olive Kitteridge: Fiction

by Elizabeth Strout

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • The beloved first novel featuring Olive Kitteridge, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of My Name is Lucy Barton and the Oprah’s Book Club pick Olive, Again

“Fiction lovers, remember this name: Olive Kitteridge. . . . You’ll never forget her.”—USA Today

“Strout animates the ordinary with astonishing force.”—The New Yorker

One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post Book World, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, People, Entertainment Weekly, The Christian Science Monitor, The Plain Dealer, The Atlantic, Rocky Mountain News, Library Journal
 
At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.

As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life—sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty. Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition—its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires.
 
The inspiration for the Emmy Award–winning HBO miniseries starring Frances McDormand, Richard Jenkins, and Bill Murray

• ISBN10: 0812971833
• ISBN13: 9780812971835
• Publish Date: 30 September 2008 (first published 1 January 2008)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Random House Trade Paperbacks
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 336
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780812971835

Reviews

[gmcgregor]

he thirteen short stories that make up Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge all feature the main character at least once. Sometimes she's the center of it. Sometimes she's a passing reference between two other people who live in her small Maine town. It moves roughly chronologically, beginning when Olive and her husband Henry are already older and headed toward retirement (though the first story, about Henry, is mostly a flashback), and their son Christopher is an adult. Olive negotiates her relationships with her family and her community at large as they all change, slowly but inexorably...or, often just as aggravatingly for her, don't change much at all.

Though many of the lives we encounter look at least moderately happy on the surface, there's often profound sadness lurking underneath. This is not new territory, suburban dysfunction and familial drama, and while there's nothing special plot-wise it's Strout's skill as a writer that makes this book shine. Each story is a whole unto itself but subtly builds to create a full picture of Olive, her strengths and her flaws. She can be infuriating, as when she deals with the fear from finding herself the victim of a crime by berating her husband, and she can be deeply relatable and sympathetic, like when she overhears her new daughter-in-law mocking the dress she made herself for their wedding. She is stubborn and proud and controlling and rendered with profound emotional truth. Strout never has to explicitly ascribe these qualities to Olive, because she understands the power of showing rather than telling, which she does in spare-yet-lovely prose.

As in any short story collection, some entries are stronger than others. I loved the first one, "Pharmacy" about Olive's husband's long-ago infatuation with a shy technician at his pharmacy, and two where Olive is only a background mention, "Winter Concert" and "Ship in a Bottle". Some others, like "Tulips" and "The Piano Player", failed to move me. But one of the upsides to reading short stories is that even if you don't care for a particular story, it'll be over soon! I'll be honest, I was not looking forward to reading this book, because it felt like I was in a rut of books that were interconnected vignettes without strong central plots and I wanted to read something with more structure. Happily, though, it's good enough that I found myself very much enjoying it and I'd highly recommend it even if you're skeptical of short stories!

[brokentune]

Olive Kitteridge is an extraordinary book.
I had to read the first story quite a few times to get into the characters and the get what Strout wanted to do here. The writing is gorgeous. It must have required considerable effort and discipline to compile the selection of related and yet unrelated stories - all of which involve either Olive Kitteridge or people in her community in a small town in Maine - and yet keep the tone of the stories so even, so understated.

There were two aspects of Olive Kitteridge that fascinated me most - and that are inevitably what makes or breaks this book for me:

For one, the book focuses on people in the later stages of life. Mostly. It was great to read about characters who were not going through any rites of passage or growth.

Hand in hand with this, however, came a sort of bleak realism that made it sometimes difficult to read the stories. It was the sort of realism that does not promise happy endings, and acts as a reminder that reality is often far removed from the hope and dignity which is lent to characters in stories.

I was not sure at first whether I liked or disliked this book, and to some extent I still am not sure about this, but I am glad I have read it.

3.5*

[Whitney @ First Impressions Reviews]

Olive Kitteridge is beautifully written but if possible, almost too much so. A strange critic, but because of this I had to reread portions to make sure I understood what was going on and did not develop a connection to any of the characters, nor did I care when one exited and another entered.

An example of this confusion is in the first story, The Pharmacy. Olive's husband Henry owns a old time pharmacy in the days before Walgreens. Henry Kitteridge hires an assistant named Denise who's husband is also named Henry. The three get along splendidly (Olive being indifferent). I should have realized that everything was too perfect. In Gone with the Wind, Melanie tells Ashley that she will love him as long as she lives, just as she does now, that is a death sentence as 800 pages (or 2 1/2 hours later) she dies. If it could happen to the Wilkes' it could happen to anyone. When this happened to Denise's husband, I had to read the section twice to figure who died. That's just sad, and I'm not just talking about fictional deaths.

As for Olive Kitteridge, first impressions are everything and my first impression was that she is a major bitch. There were fleeting moments of kindness but I always felt it was for her own benefit and did nothing to change my opinion. Olive was suppose to grow as a character but I just didn't see it. Olive Kitteridge was no Miss Maddie nor was Crosby, Maine Cranford which I feel the novel was trying to accomplish.

Overall, I thought that while beautiful Elizabeth Strout was a little too wordy and felt that there was very little storyline with the vignettes never weaved together.

[jamiereadthis]

I came thisclose to giving this book up on the second or third page, only (only!) because I was waist-deep in Cormac McCarthy and had no use, at present, for charming small-townsfolk on the gold coast of Maine. But, it had gotten high praise from a fellow Goodreads-er whose taste in books I greatly respect, so I fought the urge and forged ahead.

Thank goodness.

I will gladly say I have never (read: rarely) been proven so dead wrong. By the fourth page I was hooked; by the fiftieth it had up-ended every prejudice, until there was nothing left to do but sit down, shut up, and read, read, read.

I’ve been trying to find for weeks now this quote I had just recently lost, how any true person has ten different sides, how we are every one capable of great and disparate things*. The point being, this is one of the incredibly rare— presumably impossible— novels that gives a character just that: all ten different sides.

Highly recommended.

*That’s ok, Whitman said it best anyway: “I am large, I contain multitudes.”

[ibeforem]

I loved this. Being from Maine, I felt like it was very authentically "Maine", from the speech patterns and atmosphere to phrases like "Jeezum Crow", which I haven’t heard myself in at least 13 years. Add to that Olive’s occasional resemblance to my great-grandmother, and in a lot of ways reading this book was like visiting home. It’s not a particularly happy book, though there is a little bit of light at the end. Sometimes Olive is the center of the story, sometimes she’s a bit player, and sometimes she’s just walking by, but she always makes a mark. Olive’s life is hard, and there’s so much you really don’t know about her, which you realize during her heart-wrenching visit to her son’s home in New York. I think the thing that sticks with me the most is the tangible love between Olive and Henry, which is most apparent when she calls to talk to him at the nursing home and maintains her one-sided conversation. Overall, it’s just a beautifully constructed collection of stories.

[Eve1972]

A friend recommended this book to me and I wasn't sure it was going to be my thing, I generally am not a big fan of short stories, but as it turns out this isn't a collection of separate short stories but more a collection of connected stories (Olive Kitterigdge being the character that ties them all together) about life in a small New England town. It's a poetic, profound and a extremely beautifully written book. Each story peels away a different layer and exposes more about Olive. I found myself just sucked in from the very first page! This is my first time reading anything by Elizabeth Strout, but I will definitely be adding her other books to my "to read" list!!