Book Review: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Olive Kitteridge: Fiction

Elizabeth Strout's novel-in-stories about an acerbic math teacher from Crosby, Maine, has all the virtues of her first novel Amy and Isabelle, and then some. Strout writes about the lives of ordinary people with a clear-eyed yet empathetic realism, and she evokes strong emotion from the reader without resorting to melodrama.

Olive Kitteridge, a salty old woman with a dried pit of a heart, is nasty to her sweet husband Henry, and verbally and physically abusive to her son, Christopher. She walks through life steeped in disdain and disappointment toward all whom she encounters. There really isn't much to like about this character, but there is much to marvel about Strout's wonderful job of characterization, because this woman really breathes.  As the book progresses, Olive pays dearly for some of her worst behavior, and the readers does end up understanding if not forgiving her.

Not every story in the book centers on Olive, but each illustrates the same theme of ordinary couples and individuals struggling with their secret failures and disappointments, mostly in their relationships with each other. A perky picker-upper this book is not, but I would scarcely call it "depressing," as some have.  Indeed, all this intense emotional realism, rendered in Strout's beautiful unadorned prose, is positively exhilarating.

Comments

[happytheman]

[das ist gut] Thanks Deb!!!  Laura buys me the Pulitzer winners in fiction and history every year and i have yet to read this it will not be on my list.

[Martin Doe]

Not every history book focuses on oil, but every image the same theme of normal couples and individuals struggling with k">http://www.treds.co.uk/manufacturer/k-swiss/58/1">k swiss trainers the secret of their failure and disappointment, especially for their mutual

[sensible shoes]

Are you the same happytheman from the jmdl list?  I haven't been reading my comments because I've been deluged with spam.