"Olive Kitteridge"
by Elizabeth Strout.
Origins and Structure
There are 13 chapters in “Olive Kitteridge”,
each one is a free-standing short story, a one paragraph synopsis of each chapter can be found on the wikipedia page.
The page also includes a list of over 90 characters who make an appearance in the book.
The book is then is more a portrait than a story.
The portrait is well drawn with many insights into the “human condition”, warts and all.
Inside that portrait Olive Kitteridge is the central character but the location, in Crosby, Maine with it’s coastline is used to pull in the multitude of characters and relationships.
Reaction
Readers who were expecting a serial story were disappointed by the disjointed nature of the chapters at least 6 of which were published over a period of several years as free standing short stories.
One member had watched the video mini-series and found this helped with reading the book.
Olive Kitteridge emerges as a very human but not very loveable character.
Her revenge for the loss of her son was described by one AABC reviewer as “spiteful”, and she has various hang-ups and contradictions.
These comments are all overtaken by the exquisite nature of the writing.
Strout takes you “into the moment” in each cameo.
The character that produced the widest range of reactions was Christopher, Olive’s son; some readers found him selfish and self-serving, but another had some sympathy for him given his upbringing.
There were a number of humorous moments, but perhaps the funniest was the intrusions coming from the lodger’s Christian Fundamentalist Parrot. “Praise God”
The book is also a reflection of American culture with donuts, guns, divorces, therapists.
One member felt the book had a depressive feeling to it, later changed to a melancholy feeling.
Most readers had a wry smile of personally identifying with either at a character or at a situation.
PC. 11 Nov 2022
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