Olive, again

Review by Booklist Review

Has Olive mellowed? She is still irascible, she still speaks her mind with unflinching honesty, but age and the death of her husband, Henry, have worn away some of her edge: ""I feel like I've become, oh, just a tiny tiny bit better as a person,"" she says at one point. Strout's latest work like Olive Kitteridge (2008), a collection of stories set in the coastal town of Crosby, Maine takes Olive from her early seventies into her eighties, through a surprising marriage to Jack Kennison, a second widowhood, a heart attack, a kind of rapprochement with son Christopher, and, finally, a move into Maple Tree Apartments, ""that place for old people."" And also like Olive Kitteridge, in several of the stories, Olive steps aside while other characters, some bussed in from Strout's novels, take center stage and lend their own voices and perspectives. Love, loss, regret, the complexities of marriage, the passing of time, and the astonishing beauty of the natural world are abiding themes, along with ""the essential loneliness of people"" and the choices they make ""to keep themselves from that gaping darkness."" Unmissable, especially for readers who loved Olive Kitteridge. HIGH DEMAND BACKSTORY: Strout's first outing with Olive was a Pulitzer Prize-winner, an Emmy-winning HBO series, and a book club favorite; expect much reader curiosity for her return to her most beloved curmudgeon.--Mary Ellen Quinn Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

As direct, funny, sad, and human as its heroine, Strout's welcome follow-up to Olive Kitteridge portrays the cantankerous retired math teacher in old age. The novel, set in small-town coastal Crosby, Maine, unfolds like its predecessor through 13 linked stories. "Arrested" begins just after the first novel ends, with 74-year-old widower Jack Kennison wooing 73-year-old Olive. "Motherless Child" follows the family visit when Olive tells her son she plans to marry Jack. In "Labor," Olive awkwardly admires gifts at a baby shower, then efficiently delivers another guest's baby. Olive also offers characteristic brusque empathy to a grateful cancer patient in "Light," and, in "Heart," to her own two home nurses--one a Trump supporter, one the daughter of a Somali refugee. "Helped" brings pathos to the narrative, "The End of the Civil War Days" humor, "The Poet" self-recognition. Jim Burgess of Strout's The Burgess Boys comes to Crosby to visit brother Bob ("Exiles"). Olive, in her 80s, living in assisted care, develops a touching friendship with fellow resident Isabelle from Amy and Isabelle ("Friend"). Strout's stories form a cohesive novel, both sequel and culmination, that captures, with humor, compassion, and embarrassing detail, aging, loss, loneliness, and love. Strout again demonstrates her gift for zeroing in on ordinary moments in the lives of ordinary people to highlight their extraordinary resilience. (Oct.)

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Review by Library Journal Review

Olive Kitteridge is back, crustier than ever and just as unapologetic as she was when she first appeared 11 years ago. In this new collection of linked stories about the residents of Crosby, ME, Olive is never far from wielding her influence, even if she's offstage. A retired schoolteacher with very few filters from brain to mouth, Olive once again has opinions about everyone and everything--baby shower games, her husbands, motherhood, adult diapers, the ravages of aging. She drops her cutting observations with matter-of-fact, laser-like precision, sparing no one, then follows up with lovely, whiplash-inducing moments of empathy toward her neighbors, her distant son, and even, endearingly, herself. Caught up in scenes of great hilarity (a backseat childbirth) and bewildering grief, Olive may offer blunt honesty that defies societal norms, but her clarity is refreshing and never cruel. VERDICT Strout, who won the Pulitzer for Olive Kitteridge (2008), wrote that Olive forced her way back into Strout's consciousness long after the author thought she was done with her. Olive demanded Strout write these new stories. Of course Olive did that. It's so…Olive. Thank goodness Olive prevailed. Exquisite. [See Prepub Alert, 4/8/19.]--Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The thorny matriarch of Crosby, Maine, makes a welcome return.As in Strout's Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge (2008, etc.), the formidable title character is always a presence but not always onstage in these 13 interconnected tales of loneliness, loss, and love in its many flawed incarnations. Olive has not become any easier to like since her husband, Henry, died two years ago; "stupid" is a favorite adjective, and "phooey to you" a frequent term of dismissal. But over the course of about a decade we see Olive struggling, in her flinty way, to become "oh, just a tinytinybit better as a person." Her second marriage, to Jack Kennison, helps. "I like you, Olive," he says. "I'm not sure why, really. But I do." Readers will feel the same, as she brusquely comforts a former student with cancer in "Light" and commiserates with the grieving daughter-in-law she has never much liked in "Motherless Child." Yet that story ends with Olive's desolate conclusion that she is largely responsible for her fraught relationship with her son: "She herself had [raised] a motherless child." Parents are estranged from children, husbands from wives, siblings from each other in this keening portrait of a world in which each of us is fundamentally alone and never truly knows even those we love the most. This is not the whole story, Strout demonstrates with her customary empathy and richness of detail. "You must have been a very good mother," Olive's doctor says after observing Christopher in devoted attendance at the hospital after she has a heart attack, and the daughter of an alcoholic mother and dismissive, abusive father finds a nurturing substitute in her parents' lawyer in "Helped." The beauty of the natural world provides a sustaining counterpoint to charged human interactions in which "there were so many things that could not be said." There's no simple truth about human existence, Strout reminds us, only wonderful, painful complexity. "Well, that's life," Olive says. "Nothing you can do about it."Beautifully written and alive with compassion, at times almost unbearably poignant. A thrilling book in every way. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Labor Two days earlier, Olive Kitteridge had delivered a baby. She had delivered the baby in the backseat of her car; her car had been parked on the front lawn of Marlene Bonney's house. Marlene was having a baby shower for her daughter, and Olive had not wanted to park behind the other cars lined up on the dirt road. She had been afraid that someone might park behind her and she wouldn't be able to get out; Olive liked to get out. So she had parked her car on the front lawn of the house, and a good thing she had, that foolish girl--her name was Ashley and she had bright blond hair, she was a friend of Marlene's daughter--had gone into labor, and Olive knew it before anyone else did; they were all sitting around the living room on folding chairs and she had seen Ashley, who sat next to her, and who was enormously pregnant, wearing a red stretch top to accentuate this pregnancy, leave the room, and Olive just knew. She'd gotten up and found the girl in the kitchen, leaning over the sink, saying, "Oh God, oh God," and Olive had said to her, "You're in labor," and the idiot child had said, "I think I am. But I'm not due for another week." Stupid child. And a stupid baby shower. Olive, thinking of this as she sat in her own living room, looking out over the water, could not, even now, believe what a stupid baby shower that had been. She said out loud, "Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid." And then she got up and went into her kitchen and sat down there. "God," she said. She rocked her foot up and down. The big wristwatch of her dead husband, Henry, which she wore, and had worn since his stroke four years ago, said it was four o'clock. "All right then," she said. And she got her jacket--it was June, but not warm today--and her big black handbag and she went and got into her car--which had that gunky stuff still left on the backseat from that foolish girl, although Olive had tried to clean it as best she could--and she drove to Libby's, where she bought a lobster roll, and then she drove down to the Point and sat in her car there and ate the lobster roll, looking out at Halfway Rock. A man in a pickup truck was parked nearby, and Olive waved through her window to him but he did not wave back. "Phooey to you," she said, and a small piece of lobster meat landed on her jacket. "Oh, hell's bells ," she said, because the mayonnaise had gotten into the jacket--she could see a tiny dark spot--and would spoil the jacket if she didn't get it to hot water fast. The jacket was new, she had made it yesterday, sewing the pieces of quilted blue-and-white swirling fabric on her old machine, being sure to make it long enough to go over her hind end. Agitation ripped through her. The man in the pickup truck was talking on a cellphone, and he suddenly laughed; she could see him throwing his head back, could even see his teeth as he opened his mouth in his laughter. Then he started his truck and backed it up, still talking on his cellphone, and Olive was alone with the bay spread out before her, the sunlight glinting over the water, the trees on the small island standing at attention; the rocks were wet, the tide was going out. She heard the small sounds of her chewing, and a loneliness that was profound assailed her. It was Jack Kennison. She knew this is what she had been thinking of, that horrible old rich flub-dub of a man she had seen for a number of weeks this spring. She had liked him. She had even lain down on his bed with him one day, a month ago now, right next to him, could hear his heart beating as her head lay upon his chest. And she had felt such a rush of relief--and then fear had rumbled through her. Olive did not like fear. And so after a while she had sat up and he had said, "Stay, Olive." But she did not stay. "Call me," he had said. "I would like it if you called me." She had not called. He could call her if he wanted to. And he had not called. But she had bumped into him soon after, in the grocery store, and told him about her son who was going to have another baby any day down in New York City, and Jack had been nice about that, but he had not suggested she come see him again, and then she saw him later (he had not seen her) in the same store, talking to that stupid widow Bertha Babcock, who for all Olive knew was a Republican like Jack was, and maybe he preferred that stupid woman to Olive. Who knew? He had sent one email with a bunch of question marks in the subject line and nothing more. That was an email? Olive didn't think so. "Phooey to you," she said now, and finished her lobster roll. She rolled up the paper it had come in and tossed it onto the backseat, where that mess still showed in a stain from that idiot girl.  * "I delivered a baby today," she had told her son on the telephone. Silence. "Did you hear me?" Olive asked. "I said I delivered a baby today." "Where?" His voice sounded wary. "In my car outside Marlene Bonney's house. There was a girl--" And she told him the story. "Huh. Well done, Mom." Then in a sardonic tone he said, "You can come here and deliver your next grandchild. Ann's having it in a pool." "A pool?" Olive could not understand what he was saying. Christopher spoke in a muffled tone to someone near him. "Ann's pregnant again ? Christopher, why didn't you tell me?" "She's not pregnant yet. We're trying. But she'll get pregnant." Olive said, "What do you mean, she's having it in a pool? A swimming pool?" "Yeah. Sort of. A kiddie pool. The kind we had in the backyard. Only this one is bigger and obviously super clean." "Why?" "Why? Because it's more natural. The baby slides into the water. The midwife will be here. It's safe. It's better than safe, it's the way babies should be born." "I see," said Olive. She didn't see at all. " When is she having this baby?" "As soon as we know she's pregnant, we'll start counting. We're not telling anyone that we're even trying, because of what just happened to the last one. But I just told you. So there." "All right then," Olive said. "Goodbye." Christopher--she was sure of this--had made a sound of disgust before he said, "Goodbye, Mom." Excerpted from Olive, Again (Oprah's Book Club): A Novel by Elizabeth Strout All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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