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Olive Kitteridge: Fiction

Elizabeth Strout
Random House (2008)  
ISBN 9781400062089
Reviewed by Audrey Larson for RebeccasReads (2/08)

Each chapter in the book is a short story of different people and families living in a Maine community.  Olive Kitteridge is a retired math teacher who knows, and/or has contact with, the people in the stories.

Olive Kitteridge is a female curmudgeon.  She is harsh, opinionated, judgmental, quite unlikeable, and manages to offend someone every time she opens her mouth.  Most of us know a woman or women similar to Olive Kitteridge, who are abrasive, irritating and cause stress everywhere they go.  Often, they don't even know, understand or care how badly they affect others.  Olive’s own son told her she was the most feared teacher in the school.  Olive alienates her son with her harsh language and ways, even though she loves him.  And people are always wondering why her husband puts up with her.  Her husband, Henry Kitteridge, is just the opposite of Olive.  He is happier, more easy-going, pleasant, positive, helpful and accepting of others.  Henry is a very likeable person, where Olive is not. 

This book is about relationships, family dynamics, every-day, ordinary people with their troubles, problems, tragedies, mistakes, and learning experiences throughout their lives.  There seems to be very little happiness, peace or humor in any of the characters’ lives.  Certainly, Olive Kitteridge is too negative in all her thinking, and seems to lack a sense of humor.  She takes herself way too seriously.

Olive Kitteridge is a senior citizen who keeps right on analyzing, learning and doing a bit of growing right to the end of the book.  But describing her is a bit like “we grow too soon old and too late smart.” 

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