Olive, Again: A Novel (Olive, 2)

“Olive, Again” by Elizabeth Strout has a lot to say and a very unique way to do so. Olive Kitteridge came on the scene with a bang in 2008 as one of the most idiosyncratic characters in literature. Here, shocking things happen around her in Crosby, Maine and we recognize her inability to understand what it all means. The web describes Kitteridge as a “well-meaning misanthrope” which makes her difficult to predict. You would think that writing about what she doesn't understand would lack depth but it does not.

Having not read the original, I was shocked by the aging motif. Olive and her husband, Jack, look back on their lives, dwell on memories of affairs and failed marriages, and still struggle to find out what it all means now. A part about a man on antidepressants and the struggles of marital compromise hit home with me the most. Mrs. Kitteridge floats in and out of others' lives, knowing as a teacher that she has had a profound effect on everyone whether she tried to do so or otherwise.

It often challenges me to read about protagonists of demographics different from my own. Olive, as an individual works because we see how she views others and watch her learn about her preconceived notions. No one will mistake Olive for a perfect woman but we feel for her just the same, especially when she starts to look back on life with regret, confusion, and self-doubt. She has made mistakes but we question whether or not she deserves her lot in life after she helps others so much.

So much of the novel comes with our understanding of Olive and how we perceive her. It almost makes me not want to watch the mini-series with Frances McDormand and Bill Murray since I had my own vision of the people. Hollywood would work its usual magic in aging all of the actors gradually but capturing their essence may work better on paper. Strout creates a lot of personalities in a limited amount of time in the short story format but you grow to enjoy each of them in their own context.

When I review books, I often warn you if the book is not to everyone's taste. "Olive, Again" deals mostly with human nature and deals with events and not necessarily action or shock. This made it my kind of novel. It will make you want to tell others how you feel and appreciate the time you have with them. Even those who find themselves disgruntled with those around them will relate to Olive at her most irritable. You will grow frustrated with her at times but remain glad that you met her.

Only FIVE stars? C'mon! Ya need TEN stars for a book like this! At least! I think I might have felt the same way when I read Elizabeth Strout's OLIVE KITTERIDGE ten-plus years ago. I've seen numerous comments in various early reactions to OLIVE, AGAIN that the sequel is even better than the original. Well, those folks were right. I was so completely caught up in these new stories of Olive and other denizens of the small coastal town of Crosby, Maine, that I barely surfaced until I'd turned the last page.

We meet again the characters from the first Olive book, but here are the Burgess brothers and their sister too, as well as Amy and Isabelle, the complex and compelling characters from other Strout books. But none are nearly as good as the blunt, outspoken Olive herself, who ages another dozen years, well into her eighties, in this collection of finely interwoven stories, finally reduced to the indignities of Depends, which she characteristically calls her "foolish poopie panties," which caused me to laugh out loud and nearly weep for her simultaneously.

OLIVE, AGAIN is a book filled with humor, sadness, humanity and hard-won wisdom, telling us that life is strange, hard, filled with wonder, and finite. It is, in my estimation, nothing less than a modern masterpiece of the human condition. Bravo, Ms Strout. My very highest recommendation.

• Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER

I have no idea why I love the character of Olive Kittredge so much! I’m not sure I would even like her, if I met her in real life. However, her honesty & bluntness, is so compelling. I am quite blunt, and also very honest. Maybe that is why I like Olive so much. Ms. Strout has written another warm and unbelievably intuitive book about the human condition. It does, however make me a little worried about what it’s going to be like when I am older, and possibly alone. Isn’t that what a book is supposed to do? Reach you in some deep and visceral way?

I read this book because, obviously, I had loved Olive in the prior book. Olive is a difficult, forthright and opionated woman who speaks her mind and forms uninformed opinions about everyone she meets. She is most definitely not loveable, and yet we had come to love her. Olive is barely in this book. And the final note of hope and peace that you find at the end of the first book is immediately withdrawn from this one. It only is found again at very nearly the end. Especially in the beginning of this novel there is a lot of profanity that the characters are saying--gratuious, unnecessary profanity. And Olive is not charming or endearing in any way. And virtually all of the characters that tell their stories have the saddest, most hopeless stories you can have. Sometimes at the very end of their recitation there is a small upbeat in positivity, but that is all you are given after having endured the prior hopeless anecdote. And I wsan't sure what the author was hoping I would take away from that. That life just plain sucks? You can try your best and are abused or neglected and there is no other option than that? Honestly, if this is all life can be or is to be expected then no wonder Olive is so mean. And the first half of the book most of the descriptions that Olive internally makes about anybody she meets usually regards the size of their ass or their stomach flopping onto the table. Real body shaming nonsense that is pretty atrocious. I was glad I did get to the end because Olive does conclude that she makes assumptions against people based on something as nonsensical as that fact they are from New York, for example. (and that is wrong in her mind, obviously). Finally, and I mean finally, Olive finds some peace and friends in an assisted living home and concludes (and I highlighted this) "I do not have a clue who I have been. Truthfully, I do not understand a thing."

I think the author wanted to finish up the charming book about Olive with a story about the end of life of someone like Olive. And if you are game for that, then read this book. If I had read that in the reviews, I don't know if I would have read the book. Death and the end of a life is rarely really dealt with in any form in our country. And it is certainly a topic everyone has to face. This books main topic is that. And even more than that. This book deals with death from the point of view of a person who almost certainly lives at odds with the world and alienates most people she meets--even though her honesty breaks through defenses of people in odds comforting ways at times. It deals with Olive's loneliness and her relationship with her son which had been a disappointment much of her life. I was glad that relationship was healed somewhat by the end of the book. I think everybody ought to read this book so that our end of life is more connected in peace before we reach our ends. I don't know if this was meant to be a cautionary tale, but it has to be. Because virtually every periphery character is a cautionary tale of their own in this story.