Book Review of Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Camden, Maine | To Make Much of Time travel blog

UPDATED: 2/5/2023

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270 pages, originally published in 2008

YOU MAY ENJOY THIS BOOK IF YOU LIKE:

literary fiction * novels about the human experience

TRAVEL INSPIRATION:

This novel takes place in the fictionalized town of Crosby, Maine, believed to be based on the real-life town of Brunswick, Maine, which happens to be a town I have visited.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth Strout

Born and raised in Maine, Elizabeth Strout currently splits her time between Maine and New York City. Olive Kitteridge was the third novel she published and her most recent, her seventh, is a continuation of Olive’s story with the 2019 publishing of Olive, Again. For Olive Kitteridge, Strout receive the 2009 Pulitzer Price for Fiction.

REVIEW OF Olive Kitteridge BY Elizabeth Strout

The simplicity and humanity of Olive and her small Maine town are at the heart of this novel, which first introduces Olive’s husband, the local pharmacist, as his eyes wander in the direction of his helpless new employee. Olive is secondary, trying to draw her husband’s attention back her way through a series of overt and covert actions and a healthy dose of passive aggressive behavior.

In many ways, that dynamic is a perfect underpinning for this novel. Readers are introduced to the town of Crosby through a series of 13 interwoven and only semi-connected stories where Olive plays anywhere from a major to a minor role. This allows the reader to see Olive from many angles: her own self-perception, that of her husband, and from the lens of others in the town, some of whom know her well, others just in passing. As a local teacher, Olive has come into contact with just about everyone, whether residing in Crosby or just passing through on a hometown visit.

Over the course of the novel, readers become familiar with Olive’s family dynamics, which are complex, and her life’s regrets and losses. At times she is a sympathetic, relatable character; at others, she is a serious piece of work and it’s a wonder that anyone tolerates her. That was one of my favorite elements of this novel: that Olive is so very human and multi-dimensional.

And she has a wicked sense humor, perhaps best exemplified during her son’s wedding to a woman whom Olive is not particularly found. While Olive is tolerating her new daughter-in-law, she passes a point of no return when she overhears her daughter-in-law mocking her at the wedding. In an act of nuanced retribution, Olive steals a shoe out of her daughter-in-law’s closet, imaging the woman looking high and low for the match to the other left behind. To underscore this retribution, she also makes uses a marker on a sweater folded neatly in her daughter-in-law’s closet, an unpleasant surprise to be discovered months later.

In addition to being a fascinating study of Olive, this novel produces so many short stories with equally interesting characters that flit across the pages, sometimes reemerging in later parts of the story. I really enjoyed this novel and would recommend it to others.

While I have not yet read the sequel, Olive, Again, I understand that novel follows a similar arc of 13 stories. Olive Kitteridge was also made into a 4-part mini-series on HBO in 2014, though I have not seen that myself.