2023-09-02
Maine event
Author
American. Favourite of the critics even before Olive Kitteridge (2008) won the Pulizter Prize. Her last novel, My Name is Lucy Barton (2016) was a widely praised best seller. Her short fiction has been published in a number of magazines, including The New Yorker. She teaches at the Master of Fine Arts program at Queens University of Charlotte NC. Olive Kitteridge was made into an HBO TV series in 2014 starring Frances McDormand.
Plot
Like the original, there’s not a plot as such. Instead, the book comprises a series of stories set in the small seaside community of Crosby, Maine, interlinked (sometimes quite loosely) by Olive Kitteridge, an unattractive and at times overbearing maths teacher, who is also an abrasive commentator on local behaviour and mores. In the original, Olive featured prominently in the stories that involved her husband Henry, a pharmacist, and their children. In the sequel, Henry is dead, and Olive finds companionship, and eventually marries, a widowed former Harvard history lecturer who retired to the area. The events described are largely quotidian.
Characters
Olive is Olive, never afraid to call a spade a spade, but has mellowed a little second time at bat. The supporting cast is interesting and keenly drawn. Crosby seems to be a fairly depressing place that is home to a lot of depressed white people.
Prose
Crisp, clear prose. The chapter changes would likely come off as abrupt in the hands of a lesser writer, but Ms Strout is a past master (or mistress, or something with a neutral pronoun) of this sort of thing.
Bottom line
I read Olive Kitteridge ten years ago and didn’t like it much, although I admired Ms Strout, and still do, for blazing the trail for a different type of novel structure that has been copied, but not bettered, by a number of writers since. I gave it another go before I tangled with Olive, Again, and had similar misgivings. Whether because Olive has toned down a little in her late seventies, or because Ms Strout is a more seasoned writer, I liked this book better than the original, something I can’t recall having done before.