OLIVE KITTERIDGE: ELIZABETH STROUT

I didn't know much about this book, other than it had won a Pulitzer Prize and I had read Strout's earlier novel, Amy and Isabelle quite a while ago and liked.  So, when I started it, I was not sure what I was getting into.  And, at first, I had an instant dislike of Olive though I found the setting and characters from Crosby, Maine, interesting.  Like a number of novels these days, this book is a series of inter related short stories, with Olive at the center, to a lesser degree her husband Henry, her son Christopher.  Olive is hard to like, a retired math teacher, no nonsense, no small talk, unsentimental, a realist she should would say, who suffers no fools, and is intolerant of most, her husband included.  But as the stories continued, I found myself softening toward Olive, despite her shrewishness, as she always seemed to make up for her social ineptness with a kindness of a sort, whether toward a young girl suffering from anorexia or a poor young drug addict, caught up in a robbery.

Some of the stories seem to have little to do with Olive, though she may be mentioned, or one of the characters might have had her in math class,  but not always.  What holds them together, finally, is living, what it means to be alive, to live in the moment, to be conscious that this gift can be gone in a moment, as Olive finds out too late, like most of us.  I grew to like her more and more, despite her unrepentant ways, her refusal ever to say 'she's sorry' about anything, as her husband Henry accuses. And despite her acts of kindness, her sympathy at times for the down trodden, she rarely is aware of how her attitude, her tough exterior and talk, affect others, her kind, cheerful husband, Henry, especially her sensitive and lonely son Christopher, whom she no doubt loves, but rarely shows it except through discipline and tough love.  I won't forget her, the people of Crosby, Maine, their simple but authentic lives, desirous of life and love, often thwarted by fate.  It's hard to like Olive, to sympathize with her self inflicted loneliness, to see that others might, but beneath her armor, like us all, she longs to 'just connect', though it scares her, might even seem foolish.  This book might be more meaningful to someone my age, just retired, but I think most would enjoy it.  All should read it, especially the young who have no understanding of what it means to grow old, as I am sure my mother thought about my youthful foolishness and naivete.  I want to read it again.