Elizabeth Strout, "Olive Kitteridge"

OK, I feel old. Some authors that I featured in the earlier days of this blog already have another book out, since the last time I wrote about them. And of course, I still haven't read the first book I discussed.

Back in February 2007, I wrote about Elizabeth Strout's book Abide With Me. I had read and enjoyed an earlier book by Strout called Amy and Isabelle, and thought that Abide With Me also looked good. Well, Strout has a third book out called Olive Kitteridge which is a collection of interconnected stories that, like her other books, takes place in a small New England town.

It was just reviewed by Entertainment Weekly. Here is the review:

The interconnected stories in Elizabeth Strout's new book, Olive Kitteridge, follow small-town Maine folk, particularly the stolid, blunt schoolteacher of the title and her husband, Henry, the amiable local druggist. The tales meander with them through the years, weathering their attractions to other people; the adolescence and marriage of their son, Christopher; and finally Henry's illness.

Sometimes the couple are at the center of the action; at other times, they hover on the fringes. Strout, thrifty as any Down Easter, conveys their marriage in the sparest language possible. When Henry wants to invite Denise, his young employee, for dinner, Olive tells him, ''Not keen on it.'' But when he does so anyway — he has a crush on her — the tenuousness of their marriage surfaces in this exchange: ''For dessert they were each handed a blue bowl with a scoop of vanilla ice cream sliding in its center. 'Vanilla's my favorite,' Denise said. 'Is it,' said Olive. 'Mine, too,' Henry Kitteridge said.''

Through all her passive aggression, Olive emerges as an opinionated and often sad woman who imagines her own depression as ''a thing inside me...sometimes it swells up like the head of a squid and shoots blackness through me.'' Her father committed suicide, and now Christopher suffers the same dark moodiness. The scene at his wedding, when Olive overhears the bride and her mother denigrating her dress, just might break your heart. Rarely does a story collection pack such a gutsy emotional punch. A

Any Strout readers out there?

Comments

[Lisa]

I received this book from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program, and I'm so glad I did. This was the first book by Strout that I had read. I absolutely loved it. The author does such a good job of creating characters with depth. Olive is brusk, rude, and very opinionated, but she feels very deeply the hurts that are inflicted upon her. She, like most of us, is an eclectic mix of personality traits. I liked her in spite of myself. I highly recommend this book.