Olive Kitteridge

I put off reading this book for a long time because I was afraid, despite its good reviews, that it would be a cringe-inducing portrait of a middle-aged woman. It's not. It's a series of stories, some that focus on Olive Kitteridge and some that just happen around her, that creates a community of characters. I read it in one afternoon because I couldn't wait to see what happened next.

Olive Kitteridge was a completely different book than I imagined. I suppose I expected it to be a little bit more light-hearted, a little bit more happy.

I was taken aback by how stern Olive was as a character. Unfortunately, I often feel unhappy with a book if I can't relate to a character. I found Olive to be depressing, miserable, and oblivious to her own damaging characteristics most of the time. I found her relationships with friends - few though they were - and family to be distressing yet compelling simultaneously.

This book made me wonder about people and their relationships to each other. Strout did a great job of getting at the heart of people's melancholy and their feelings of frustration, disgust, apathy, and nostalgia. I wonder how I would feel reading this book years from now, with more life experience. I would say this was a very well-written book with a lot of complicated characters. But at the same time, I wouldn't say it was an enjoyable book.

It was structured in short story format, like Unaccustomed Earth (Lahiri), but in this book the stories were all interconnected by Olive, the “main” character. But while just as complex and problematic, I didn't love Olive Kitteridge as much as I loved Unaccustomed Earth.

There is nothing more romantic than old people who have been married a really long time. This book is about them. Some lose their spouses, some have affairs, some die. They are often in hell, as the main character observes. And then after all that, they move on. Olive is awesome. Well worth the read.