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Loading... Olive Kitteridge: Fiction (edition 2008)by Elizabeth Strout
Work InformationOlive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This was another book that I got for a college class. The professor only assigned certain sections, but after having read the whole thing, I wish we had read it all back then. Each story provides insight into Olive and the lives of the other citizens that builds strongly upon each other. If I had to pick a theme of this book, it would be that it is filled with love stories and heartbreak. I was surprised how many of the stories had to do with at least one partner cheating on the other. I did appreciate that all of the main/pov characters were older. I overall enjoyed it, but its probably not a book I'll pick up again soon. Maybe in a few years. ( ) Review of Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout I decided to read this book now, so long after its original publication, because Elizabeth Strout has been recommended to me by so many trusted friends. When the book was new, I was put off by the short story format, and I’ve always had plenty else on my TBR. But as I approached Olive this time, I found that I did in fact like the separate stories which are unified by their focus on Olive and by their setting in the small town of Crossby, Maine. I found Strout’s writing clear and pleasant to read. The stories are well drawn scenes, that made me laugh at times, cringe with embarassment at others, sometimes even flinch with pain. But what I enjoyed most about the book was the character of Olive herself. From the outset, she is an unpleasant woman, not very sociable. She suffers from a wide streak of paranoia. Much of the time she treats her husband terribly, and she manages to totally alienate her son who grows up afraid of her; she is a controlling, demanding, and irritable mother. Many of her students (she teaches math) fear her as well, though some do appreciate her as a teacher. The remarkable thing about her characterization is that it was not long before I began to like Olive, and by the last stories, I was rooting for her. It gradually becomes clear that she loves her family fiercely and loyally. I really want her to figure out how to repair her rifts with them. I rated Olive Kitteridge at 3.5 stars. I enjoyed reading it and will be reading more of Elizabeth Strout. 3.5 stars. This book was very well written and I did like it. It was written more as a collection of short stories about the people of Crosby with Olive being a recurring character. I prefer to read novels so it was a lot harder to get into. I thought there were some wonderful characterizations and insights into life, but I came away with the thought that the book seemed a bit depressing. A Pulitzer Prize winning book. Written very differently than any other book I have read. Excellently written. Kirkus: The abrasive, vulnerable title character sometimes stands center stage, sometimes plays a supporting role in these 13 sharply observed dramas of small-town life from Strout (Abide with Me, 2006, etc.).Olive Kitteridge certainly makes a formidable contrast with her gentle, quietly cheerful husband Henry from the moment we meet them both in ?Pharmacy,? which introduces us to several other denizens of Crosby, Maine. Though she was a math teacher before she and Henry retired, she?s not exactly patient with shy young peopleor anyone else. Yet she brusquely comforts suicidal Kevin Coulson in ?Incoming Tide? with the news that her father, like Kevin?s mother, killed himself. And she does her best to help anorexic Nina in ?Starving,? though Olive knows that the troubled girl is not the only person in Crosby hungry for love. Children disappoint, spouses are unfaithful and almost everyone is lonely at least some of the time in Strout?s rueful tales. The Kitteridges? son Christopher marries, moves to California and divorces, but he doesn?t come home to the house his parents built for him, causing deep resentments to fester around the borders of Olive?s carefully tended garden. Tensions simmer in all the families here; even the genuinely loving couple in ?Winter Concert? has a painful betrayal in its past. References to Iraq and 9/11 provide a somber context, but the real dangers here are personal: aging, the loss of love, the imminence of death. Nonetheless, Strout?s sensitive insights and luminous prose affirm life?s pleasures, as elderly, widowed Olive thinks, ?It baffled her, the world. She did not want to leave it yet.?A perfectly balanced portrait of the human condition, encompassing plenty of anger, cruelty and loss without ever losing sight of the equally powerful presences of tenderness, shared pursuits and lifelong loyalty.
Each of the 13 tales serves as an individual microcosm of small-town life, with its gossip, small kindnesses, and everyday tragedies. Not all the minor characters stand out the way Henry and Olive do, and there are a pile of them to keep straight by the end. I also couldn’t quite place how one story, “Ship in a Bottle,” meshed with the rest. But those are small flaws far outweighed by the book’s compassion and intelligence. The pleasure in reading “Olive Kitteridge” comes from an intense identification with complicated, not always admirable, characters. And there are moments in which slipping into a character’s viewpoint seems to involve the revelation of an emotion more powerful and interesting than simple fellow feeling—a complex, sometimes dark, sometimes life-sustaining dependency on others. Olive Kitteridge might be described by some as a battle axe or as brilliantly pushy, by others as the kindest person they had ever met. Olive herself has always been certain that she is 100% correct about everything - although, lately, her certitude has been shaken. This indomitable character appears at the centre of these narratives that comprise Olive Kitteridge. In each of them, we watch Olive, a retired schoolteacher, as she struggles to make sense of the changes in her life and the lives of those around her always with brutal honesty, if sometimes painfully. Olive will make you laugh, nod in recognition, as well as wince in pain or shed a tear or two. We meet her stoic husband, bound to her in a marriage both broken and strong, and her own son, tyrannised by Olive's overbearing sensitivities. The reader comes away, amazed by this author's ability to conjure this formidable heroine and her deep humanity that infiltrates every page. Belongs to SeriesOlive Kitteridge (1) Belongs to Publisher SeriesKeltainen kirjasto (505) Mirmanda (74) Is contained inHas the adaptationIs abridged inAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
At the edge of the continent, in the small town of Crosby, Maine, lives Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher who deplores the changes in her town and in the world at large but doesn't always recognize the changes in those around her. No library descriptions found.
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LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumElizabeth Strout's book Olive Kitteridge was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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