Elizabeth Strout’s new ‘novel in stories’ brings to life a hardscrabble community on the coast of Maine...but Olive Kitteridge is provincial only in a literal sense … It manages to combine the sustained, messy investigation of the novel with the flashing insight of the short story. By its very structure, sliding in and out of different tales and different perspectives, it illuminates both what people understand about others and what they understand about themselves … Strout’s prose is quickened by her use of the ‘free indirect’ style, in which a third-person narrator adopts the words or tone a particular character might use … The pleasure in reading Olive Kitteridge comes from an intense identification with complicated, not always admirable, characters.
What you begin to realize, as these carefully crafted, individual pieces accumulate, is that together they shape the arc of a narrative, and that the narrative is nothing less than the whole of Olive Kitteridge's life. A novel, yes, in stories … As the 13 stories unfold – each one taking its time, thick with the well-observed details of ordinary lives and the nakedness of inner minds – Olive is revealed to us as a woman wounded, as well as wounding … There are glimmers of warmth, of human connection, in even the darkest of these stories. Strout's benevolence toward her characters forms a slender bridge between heartbreak and hope, a dimly glimpsed path through minefields of despair.
Here's a perfect example of a character you'd never be friends with, but whom you can't stop reading about: Her name is Olive Kitteridge, and she's the title character of Elizabeth Strout's book of short stories … Olive is a character who's as bad as you'd be if you let yourself — and that's partly what drives the book: You can't wait to see what she's going to do next … There's at least one secret in every story — and one life-changing moment. Maybe that's why this book delivers what you hardly ever get in a literary novel: suspense.
Strout creates a melancholy world where parents pine for their grown children, spouses grieve in marriages grown cold with misunderstanding, and yet where hope, humor, and a kind of quiet endurance remain … Strout makes a reader feel protective, even tender, toward Olive – despite her prickliness … A reader would want to hug Olive, if she weren’t likely to swat one away like a low-flying bat … Each of the 13 tales serves as an individual microcosm of small-town life, with its gossip, small kindnesses, and everyday tragedies.
Kudos to Elizabeth Strout, who not only has created a sui generis character in Olive but has done so in a brilliantly revealing way. In this ‘Novel in Stories,’ Olive emerges kaleidoscopically, seen through the eyes of her kind pharmacist husband, her unhappy son, her longtime neighbors, her former students … By the end of Olive Kitteridge, you'll be madly in love with an old, overweight widow and hoping she lives forever … Strout's craftsmanship — the way she constructs her stories with rich irony and moments of genuine surprise and intense emotion — is first rate. In several tales, Olive is at the periphery, and other memorable characters steal the spotlight … Glorious, powerful stuff.
Although the book is being marketed as ‘a novel in stories,’ it is not a novel but a unified cycle of finely observed tales focusing on characters inhabiting a single town … Loss is the major theme of Olive Kitteridge, particularly the loss of youth, and of the illusions that age and experience render difficult to sustain … Strout is equally deft at life's lighter moments, even when they occur in serious contexts … Olive Kitteridge is an often-painful book to read because of its insistence on life's sharper realities, but that is precisely what makes it such a gratifying stunner.
In 13 short stories that form a fully realized novel, we come to know Olive as a cranky, sarcastic, dismissive sourpuss. Make no mistake: This is no crusty heroine with a heart of gold. Olive's heart can be as black as her tongue is tart, but there are times when she'll surprise you with her compassion … Elizabeth Strout has drawn an indelible portrait of a difficult woman whose life is fraught with disappointment, some of it self-inflicted. Despite all, she can penetrate the hearts and souls of others, bringing sweet relief and comfort to those who despair of their own lives.
These are tales of turning points, the road taken or not, in which the possibility of betrayal lies close to the surface. Finely drawn lines examine the struggle between temptation and honor, between gratification and longing, and between acceptance and forgiveness … The coastal town of Crosby, Maine, is an appropriately intimate setting for the large emotions Strout explores … If there is a single thread running through these stories, it involves the bittersweet search for connection … These stories are wise and touching, and taken as a whole it is a collection that begs for further savoring after the final page is turned.
