She’s the center of a number of the stories and we come to know more about her as she comes to know more about herself. She’s older and maybe a little more self aware, but always trying to understand herself. On the one hand it’s Olive’s story as she reaches her seventies and eighties.

And by the end of this book, I thought how lucky some of these characters were to have Olive in their lives and I felt for Olive as she endures her own challenges.Īs in the first book, Strout skillfully weaves separate stories together, with Olive as the thread, but these books for me felt like novels. I can’t say I liked Olive very much when I started reading Olive Kitteridge, but by the end of that book I realized how many people she had positively impacted as a teacher and as a neighbor. I found at times her softer side, her more vulnerable side that aren’t alway evident. She’s not the best wife or mother and honestly she can be pretty brash, but it becomes obvious, though, that in spite of the things she says she cares. She’ll tell you exactly what she thinks about you in brutally honest words. In reality it could be anywhere, but of course it wouldn’t be the same unless Olive was there. This is Crosby, Maine, the small coastal town where our old friend Olive Kittridge lives. More than once I stopped between stories to take a breath. Thankfully, there also is friendship and love and empathy that Olive Kittridge finds within herself to give, because the truths about life are dauntingly sad at times. In Crosby, Maine you’ll find characters dealing with loneliness, infidelity, alcoholism, sickness, aging, death, regrets, so many regrets. Elizabeth Strout is such a keen observer of human nature, of our shared condition and she reminds us that life is full of a struggle of some kind for pretty much all of us.

Olive kitteridge goodreads