I feel like I’m playing catch-up on the Elizabeth Strout oeuvre, and that I’m way behind the rest of the world in recognizing the considerable talent of this author. I first read her best known work, Olive Kitteridge, just last year, and am glad that was somewhat fresh in my mind for this book.
We pick-up where we left off with Olive and the rest of Crosby, Maine. In this collection of chapters and stories, we see Olive moving on and getting older (considerably), and potentially even mellowing with age. As in the first book, several stories feature Olive while in others she is a minor or even a bit player. I was moved by her newfound happiness in her second marriage, and then her renewed loss and loneliness when her second husband passes away. Loss and loneliness are the key themes in the stories. My favourites were the one about the woman who loves the February light and then learns that Olive does, too, and the one about the poet. I was glad that, by the end of the book, Olive seems to have found a friend and some kind of peaceful existence in a safe if dull spot.
Strout’s writing is exquisite. She doesn’t over-describe or fill in spaces but lets her characters and their situations and responses lead the reader along. She also brings in the quotidian details in ways that allow you to know the characters well – Olive’s penchant for getting two doughnuts and coffee to go; her grandchildren’s cereal routine and how foreign that is to her; the way long separated siblings fall into easy and uneasy sharing of life details, as if both long-time comrades and comparative strangers.
More Strout in my future for sure.
Fate: I’m unlikely to read this again, so little book library.
8 – female author
19 – colour in title
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