Olive Kitteridge

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.

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.

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!

Wow. Read this in one day (today, actually). I'm intrigued how I picked it up after another big prize winner, “Love in the Time of Cholera,” and felt that Strout accomplished for me what I kept wishing Marquez had–written a book I literally could not put down. Not because the plot is so gripping, because it's purposefully not. The novel is full of a large cast of characters, though, all of whom at some point briefly glimpse the truth that a lot of the terrible things people do are really just because we're all lonely, but who then lose their grip on that truth in the muck of day-to-day living: from being on the causing and receiving ends of that loneliness. An excellent book to read in order to remember that everyone deserves empathy.

The language here is beautiful; Strout is a pro. The book is called a novel in stories, but the linkages aren't as strong as I thought they'd be. No worries, though. The character of Olive Kitteridge is present throughout, to a greater or lesser degree, and she's quite a character. Until the very end, the reader might not like her very much, but anticipates her next arrival on the page, wondering who she'll snap at next. The book is very unusual in that it is about older people. Olive is in her seventies. And while there are other characters who are younger, including her vapid son, mostly this is an older crowd. It's a fine, quiet book.

DNF'd at 56%. This book isn't long but I simply couldn't take it anymore. This was a miserable sit. There is no joy or hope or spirit in this book. I think it wanted to be sort of like the film “It's a Wonderful Life,” centering on one community and its varied interesting characters. Imagine “It's a Wonderful Life” if every character was either Potter (mean and cruel) or Uncle Billy (miserable and pathetic). Story after story about miserable adults cheating on their miserable spouses, miserable adults who die from eating disorders, miserable adults miserable adults coping with the health decline of their miserable spouses, miserable pointless story after miserable pointless story. Olive herself being the most miserable of them all. Somebody really needed to smack the shit out of her. Am I supposed to feel bad for her, when she overhears her daughter-in-law saying how much she doesn't like Olive? And am I supposed to have a “you go, girl!” moment when Olive rifles through this woman's closet and vandalizes her things? I can't tell how the author wants me to feel about her, or any of them. Everything that each of them say and do leads me to scratching my head or outright hating them. I'm also scratching my head at the constant and distracting use of adjectives to describe how fat people are. I hated this book. I'm baffled that this won any award, let alone the Pulitzer. Do not recommend.

First reading thoughts: Olive Kitteridge appears in every story in this book, though she is generally not the main character. What a brilliant book! I loved the close examination of people and their relationships within a small town. A book I'm encouraging everyone I meet to read.

Third reading thoughts: I've just finished a reread for book club tonight and I must say that I now love Olive Kitteridge even more. Olive is human, completely human, with more flaws than strengths, maybe. She sees people clearly, coldly, and she's able to see somehow all the wickedness and craziness that people get into. Yet she loves the people in her life, too, as much as she is able to do so. She can turn on a dime, so be careful around Olive Kitteridge; even her author said she added stories about people other than Olive because there's just so much of Olive Kitteridge that you can take.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

Janice Bernstein's eyes positively streaming. Afterward she said to Olive, “Don't you cry at weddings?” “I don't see any reason to cry,” Olive said.

Olive's private view is that life depends on what she thinks of as “big bursts” and “little bursts.” Big bursts are things like marriage or children, intimacies that keep you afloat, but these big bursts hold dangerous, unseen currents. Which is why you need the little bursts as well: a friendly clerk at Bradlee's, let's say, or the waitress at Dunkin' Donuts who knows how you like your coffee. Tricky business, really.

She would like to say, Listen, Dr. Sue, deep down there is a thing inside me, and sometimes it swells up like the head of a squid and shoots blackness through me. I haven't wanted to be this way, but so help me, I have loved my son.

More gratifying, however, was the fact that for Olive and Henry the story of Bill and Bunny's offspring was worse than their own.

“You may be my grandmother, but that doesn't mean I have to love you, you know.” It was a frightful thing—who would expect such a thing?

“Do you know, Ollie,” he said, looking up, his eyes tired, the skin around them red. “In all the years we've been married, all the years, I don't believe you've ever once apologized. For anything.”

No, they would never get over that night because they had said things that altered how they saw each other.

...the girl had no idea, as she plunked down their mugs of coffee, that her own arm would someday be sprinkled with age spots, or that cups of coffee had to be planned since blood pressure medicine made you widdle so much, that life picked up speed, and then most of it was gone—made you breathless, really.

Olive thought: I believe in minding my own business, that's what I believe in.

For Olive, everything turned upside down. It was as though she'd been thinking, This is a tree, and here is a kitchen stove—and it wasn't a tree at all, or a kitchen stove either.

You will marry a beast and love her, Olive thought. You will have a son and love him. You will be endlessly kind to townspeople as they come to you for medicine, tall in your white lab coat. You will end your days blind and mute in a wheelchair. That will be your life.

People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it.

Stupid—this assumption people have, that things should somehow be right.

People manage. She is not so sure. The tide is still out on that one, she thinks.

“Who are you?” Olive says, and the woman stares at her. “Who are you?” the woman answers, and Olive walks past her. That is the woman who bought Christopher's house, Olive realizes with an inner lurch, that woman who hasn't the decency to respect even a poor potted plant, let alone everything Olive and Henry worked for, their son's beautiful house, where their grandchildren were going to grow up.

“No need to be,” Olive tells her. “We all want to kill someone at some point.” Olive's ready right now to say, if Marlene wants to hear, the different people she might like to kill.

She thinks of Eddie Junior down there skipping stones, and she can only just remember that feeling herself, being young enough to pick up a rock, throw it out to sea with force, still young enough to do that, throw that damn stone.

“I always remember she said one day, ‘Don't be scared of your hunger. If you're scared of your hunger, you'll just be one more ninny like everyone else.' ”

Sometimes, like now, Olive had a sense of just how desperately hard every person in the world was working to get what they needed. For most, it was a sense of safety, in the sea of terror that life increasingly became. People thought love would do it, and maybe it did. But even if, thinking of the smoking Ann, it took three different kids with three different fathers, it was never enough, was it?

“How are you?” she said, angry because he never called. “Fine,” he said. “How are you?” “Hellish,” she answered. “How's Ann and the kids?” Christopher had married a woman with two children, and now there was his. “Everyone still walking?” “Still walking,” Chris said. “Crazy, hectic.” She almost hated him then. Her life had once been crazy and hectic, too. You just wait, she thought. Everyone thinks they know everything, and no one knows a damn thing.

His blue eyes were watching her now; she saw in them the vulnerability, the invitation, the fear, as she sat down quietly, placed her open hand on his chest, felt the thump, thump of his heart, which would someday stop, as all hearts do. But there was no someday now, there was only the silence of this sunny room. They were here, and her body—old, big, sagging—felt straight-out desire for his. That she had not loved Henry this way for many years before he died saddened her enough to make her close her eyes.

What young people didn't know, she thought, lying down beside this man, his hand on her shoulder, her arm; oh, what young people did not know. They did not know that lumpy, aged, and wrinkled bodies were as needy as their own young, firm ones, that love was 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. And if her platter had been full with the goodness of Henry and she had found it burdensome, had flicked it off crumbs at a time, it was because she had not known what one should know: that day after day was unconsciously squandered.

Her eyes were closed, and throughout her tired self swept waves of gratitude—and regret. She pictured the sunny room, the sun-washed wall, the bayberry outside. It baffled her, the world. She did not want to leave it yet.

Favorite Excerpt:

Daisy Foster, standing now to sing a hymn, turns her head and smiles at him. He nots back and opens the hymnal. ”A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.” The words, the sound of the few people singing, make him both hopeful and deeply sad. ”You can learn to love someone,” he had told Denise, when she'd come to him in the back of the store that spring day. Now as he places the hymnal back in the holder in front of him, sits once more on the small pew, he thinks of the last time he saw her. They had come north to visit Jerry's parents, and they stopped by the house with the baby, Paul. What Henry remembers is this: Jerry saying something sarcastic about Denise falling asleep each night on the cough, sometimes staying there the whole night through. Denise turning away, looking out over the bay, her shoulders slumped, her small breasts just slightly pushing out against her thing turtleneck sweater, but she had a belly, as though a basketball had been cut in half and she'd swallowed it. No longer the girl she had been—no girl stayed a girl— but a mother, tired, her round cheeks had deflated as her belly had expanded, so that already there was a look of gravity of life weighing her down. It was at that point Jerry said sharply, “Denise, stand up straight. Put your shoulders back.” He looked at Henry, shaking his head. ”How many times to I keep telling her that?”
“Have some chowder,” Henry said. ”Olive made it last night.” But they had to get going, and when they left, he said nothing about their visit, and neither did Olive, surprisingly. He would not have thought Jerry would grow into that sort of man, large, clean-looking—thanks to the ministrations of Denise—not even so much fat anymore, just a big man earning a big salary, speaking to his wife in a way Olive had sometimes spoken to Henry. He did not see her again, although she must have been in the region. In her birthday notes, she reported the death of her mother, a few years later, her father. Of course she would have driven north togo to the funerals. Did she think of him? Did she and Jerry stop and visit the grave of Henry Thibodeau?
“You're looking fresh as a daisy,” he tells Daisy Foster in the parking lot outside the church. It is their joke; he has said it to her for years.
“How's Olive?” Daisy's blue eyes are still large and lovely, her smile ever present.
“Olive's fine. Home keeping the fires burning. And what's new with you?”
“I have a beau.” She says this quietly, putting a hand to her mouth.
“Do you? Daisy that's wonderful.”
“Sells insurance in Heathwick during the day, and takes me dancing on Friday nights.”
“Oh, that's wonderful,” Henry says again. ”You'll have to bring him around for supper.”
“Why do you need everyone married?” Christopher has said to him angrily, when Henry has asked about his son's life. ”Why can't you just leave people alone.”

He doesn't want people alone.

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!!

Olive Kitteridge was a surprise to me. I expected a novel and ended up with a bunch of connected short stories. Some featured Olive as the main character while others had her make brief guest appearances. By the end, I found that Olive was both wonderful and terrible. She was kind and she was thoughtless. In essence, she was a real human being.

Somewhere between when I started the book and just after I finished, my laptop blew up and I waited for it to be fixed or to get a new one before writing this review. As such, my memory about the book is a little foggy. Still, I did like it