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OLIVE KITTERIDGE

A novel in stories.

by Elizabeth Strout ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 15, 2008

A perfectly balanced portrait of the human condition, encompassing plenty of anger, cruelty and loss without ever losing...

The abrasive, vulnerable title character sometimes stands center stage, sometimes plays a supporting role in these 13 sharply observed dramas of small-town life from Strout ( Abide with Me , 2006, etc.).

Olive Kitteridge certainly makes a formidable contrast with her gentle, quietly cheerful husband Henry from the moment we meet them both in “Pharmacy,” which introduces us to several other denizens of Crosby, Maine. Though she was a math teacher before she and Henry retired, she’s not exactly patient with shy young people—or anyone else. Yet she brusquely comforts suicidal Kevin Coulson in “Incoming Tide” with the news that her father, like Kevin’s mother, killed himself. And she does her best to help anorexic Nina in “Starving,” though Olive knows that the troubled girl is not the only person in Crosby hungry for love. Children disappoint, spouses are unfaithful and almost everyone is lonely at least some of the time in Strout’s rueful tales. The Kitteridges’ son Christopher marries, moves to California and divorces, but he doesn’t come home to the house his parents built for him, causing deep resentments to fester around the borders of Olive’s carefully tended garden. Tensions simmer in all the families here; even the genuinely loving couple in “Winter Concert” has a painful betrayal in its past. References to Iraq and 9/11 provide a somber context, but the real dangers here are personal: aging, the loss of love, the imminence of death. Nonetheless, Strout’s sensitive insights and luminous prose affirm life’s pleasures, as elderly, widowed Olive thinks, “It baffled her, the world. She did not want to leave it yet.”

Pub Date: April 15, 2008

ISBN: 978-1-4000-6208-9

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2008

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A LITTLE LIFE

by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.

Yanagihara ( The People in the Trees , 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.  

Pub Date: March 10, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8

Page Count: 720

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015

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by Hanya Yanagihara

by Elin Hilderbrand ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2015

Once again, Hilderbrand displays her gift for making us care most about her least likable characters.

Hilderbrand’s latest cautionary tale exposes the toxic—and hilarious—impact of gossip on even the most sophisticated of islands.

Eddie and Grace Pancik are known for their beautiful Nantucket home and grounds, financed with the profits from Eddie’s thriving real estate company (thriving before the crash of 2008, that is). Grace raises pedigreed hens and, with the help of hunky landscape architect Benton Coe, has achieved a lush paradise of fowl-friendly foliage. The Panciks’ teenage girls, Allegra and Hope, suffer invidious comparisons of their looks and sex appeal, although they're identical twins. The Panciks’ friends the Llewellyns (Madeline, a blocked novelist, and her airline-pilot husband, Trevor) invested $50,000, the lion’s share of Madeline’s last advance, in Eddie’s latest development. But Madeline, hard-pressed to come up with catalog copy, much less a new novel, is living in increasingly straightened circumstances, at least by Nantucket standards: she can only afford $2,000 per month on the apartment she rents in desperate hope that “a room of her own” will prime the creative pump. Construction on Eddie’s spec houses has stalled, thanks to the aforementioned crash. Grace, who has been nursing a crush on Benton for some time, gives in and a torrid affair ensues, which she ill-advisedly confides to Madeline after too many glasses of Screaming Eagle. With her agent and publisher dropping dire hints about clawing back her advance and Eddie “temporarily” unable to return the 50K, what’s a writer to do but to appropriate Grace’s adultery as fictional fodder? When Eddie is seen entering her apartment (to ask why she rented from a rival realtor), rumors spread about him and Madeline, and after the rival realtor sneaks a look at Madeline’s rough draft (which New York is hotly anticipating as “the Playboy Channel meets HGTV”), the island threatens to implode with prurient snark. No one is spared, not even Hilderbrand herself, “that other Nantucket novelist,” nor this magazine, “the notoriously cranky Kirkus.”

Pub Date: June 16, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-316-33452-5

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: May 20, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015

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by Elin Hilderbrand

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Booklover Book Reviews

Olive Kitteridge Review: Underwhelmed by this Pulitzer winner

Olive Kitteridge , Elizabeth Strout’s ‘novel of stories’, left me underwhelmed and perplexed by its lack of cohesion. Read on as I seek to explain why in my full review.

Olive Kitteridge Book Synopsis

In a voice more powerful and compassionate than ever before, New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Strout binds together thirteen rich, luminous narratives into a book with the heft of a novel, through the presence of one larger-than-life, unforgettable character: Olive Kitteridge.

At the edge of the continent, Crosby, Maine, may seem like nowhere, but seen through this brilliant writer’s eyes, it’s in essence the whole world, and the lives that are lived there are filled with all of the grand human drama–desire, despair, jealousy, hope, and love.

At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance: a former student who has lost the will to live: Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.

As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life–sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty.

( Random House )

Genre:  Drama, Literature, Short Stories

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BOOK REVIEW

Olive Kitteridge , Elizabeth Strout’s much-lauded novel has left me feeling underwhelmed.

It is understandable that her character Olive Kitteridge and her flaws, plain-speaking and stoicism has struck a chord with, or elicited an emotional response from, so many readers. I was not wholly immune. I certainly do not have to like a character to like a book.

Strout clearly has enviable skills in short story craft. Her sense of timing, choice of perspective, the deeper meaning she extracts from the smallest actions and observations is admirable. In several pieces the story’s depth creeps up on you, in much the same way life has crept up on its characters. Strout’s prose exhibits an uncommon clarity, stripping away the white noise, almost like a set of noise-cancelling speakers.

Novel of stories

For me though, Olive Kitteridge  does not succeed as a ‘novel of stories’. I was perplexed by the lack of cohesion between the pieces. That is, until I realised at least 6 of the 13 stories were published separately over the two decades preceding this novel’s 2008 publication.

The ‘novel of stories’ framework really appeals to me and I have had the pleasure of reading many fine examples of the form. From the well-known  David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas through to the lesser-known but highly recommended  What The Zhang Boys Know by Clifford Garstang . I have also read powerful ‘themed short story collections’, Ceridwen Dovey’s Only the Animals and Hollis Seamon’s Corporeality   being wonderful examples. But in form,  Olive Kitteridge falls somewhere between these two camps.

However, for me the most notable thing about this novel  was the subtle sense of liberation(?) engendered by the narrative’s underlying acquiescence to things not being right or wrong in the world, but simply the way they are. It is wise to pick our battles and we all handle things differently. But fatalism and passivity are not stances that sit well with me, and I found these aspects saddening. For this reason alone, perhaps I was simply the wrong reader for this book .

BOOK RATING:  The Story 2 / 5 ; The Writing 3 / 5  — Overall 2.5

More Olive Kitteridge reviews

“The pleasure in reading “Olive Kitteridge” comes from an intense identification with complicated, not always admirable, characters. And there are moments in which slipping into a character’s viewpoint seems to involve the revelation of an emotion more powerful and interesting than simple fellow feeling — a complex, sometimes dark, sometimes life-sustaining dependency on others.” — NYTimes

“ Olive Kitteridge is a masterpiece: The writing is so perfect you don’t even notice it; the story is so vivid it’s less like reading a story than experiencing it firsthand.” —  NPR

“A heart-wrenching, penetrating portrait of ordinary coastal Mainers living lives of quiet grief intermingled with flashes of human connection.” — Publishers Weekly

“A perfectly balanced portrait of the human condition, encompassing plenty of anger, cruelty and loss without ever losing sight of the equally powerful presences of tenderness, shared pursuits and lifelong loyalty.” — Kirkus Reviews

Olive Kitteridge is available from:

Amazon Bookshop US Book Depository OR listen to the audiobook FREE with Audible’s Trial (check eligibility)

* A Pulitzer prize-winning novel I do recommend is Less by Andrew Sean Greer .

About the Author, Elizabeth Strout

Elizabeth Strout is the author of the New York Times bestseller Olive Kitteridge , for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize ; the national bestseller Abide with Me ; and Amy and Isabelle , winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in London. She lives in Maine and New York City. See Elizabeth Strout’s  official website .

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Olive Kitteridge

By elizabeth strout.

Book review, full book summary and synopsis for Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, an empathetic story about an "unlikeable" older woman..

(This is a bit of an aside, but Olive is perfectly cast as Frances McDormand in the HBO series. One of my favorite ever award show jokes is from the 2018 Film Independent Spirit Awards when John Mulaney describes Frances McDormand thusly: "Frances McDormand, you are no bullshit. You are great. I bet a fun way to commit suicide would be to cut in front of her in line, and then go, 'Hey, lady: Relax .'")

The book follows the Kitteridges over a course of decades, and in doing so presents a series of empathetic and honest stories about the people of Crosby and the large and small dramas, heartbreaks and joys in their lives.

(The Full Plot Summary is also available, below)

Full Plot Summary

Olive Kitteridge is told as a series of short stories involving (sometimes front-and-center, other times only in the periphery) Olive Kitteridge, a math teacher living in the fictional coastal town of Crosby, Maine. Her husband Henry is a pharmacist, and her son Christopher begins the book as a teenager in high school.

Olive is a difficult and temperamental woman whose father died by suicide. Henry, meanwhile, is a kind and affable man. Through the course of the book, Olive Kitteridge retires and Henry has a stroke and later passes away. Christopher, meanwhile, grows up to be a podiatrist and gets married twice (once to Suzanne, who leaves him, and another time to Ann, who has two children and later a third). The stories also include some about various members of the town such as the local piano player or a young woman whose fiancee gets cold feet on their wedding day).

The book explores a lot of junctures in the course of an everyday life, and thematically it focuses on the nuances of what gives people happiness or causes someone to be kind or unkind.

For more detail, see the full Chapter-by-Chapter Summary .

If this summary was useful to you, please consider supporting this site by leaving a tip ( $2 , $3 , or $5 ) or joining the Patreon !

Book Review

So, my review of Olive, Again will be coming up next week-ish, but I first wanted to do a re-read of the first book, Oliver Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout.

If you’re just trying to get caught up for the sequel, note that you don’t actually need to have read this first book (Olive Kitteridge) to enjoy the second one (Olive, Again). You can also check out my summary of Olive Kitteridge or watch the fantastic HBO mini-series adaptation of this book if you want to get caught up that way as well. However, I’d recommend just reading the book in this instance, even though it’s not strictly necessary. It’s only 230 pages, it’s not a difficult read and it won a Pulitzer, come on.

Olive Kitteridge is a book about unassuming people in an unassuming town. It consists of a series of stories told with a restrained, simple elegance, great empathy but also an unflinching honesty.

The first time I read this book was a long time ago, and to be frank, it didn’t leave a huge impression on me. But I was also fairly young then, with pretty limited life experience, and I don’t think I approached it with sufficient thoughtfulness. I wanted to re-read it partially to get caught up for the follow-up, but also because I was left wondering if I’d get more out of it with some age, maturity and a slightly different mindset.

I definitely ended up appreciating the book more a closer second read, especially when it comes to more literary aspects like symbolism and trying to understand what Strout was really trying to say in these stories. There’s a lot of subtext in Olive Kitteridge and a lot that’s left unsaid. It is a powerful book, but in much quieter ways than your average novel.

Olive Kitteridge is an intensely interior novel and it focuses on the inner thoughts in these characters heads, in terms of what drives them or brings them joy or grief. The relationship between Olive and her son Christopher though is perhaps the most compelling. The book explores Olive’s history and how it plays into Christopher’s upbringing and how that evolves as Christopher grows into an adult.

Note that if you’re looking for a female protagonist version of A Man Called Ove , then this is not it. It’s a very different type of book that tries to understand Olive’s unhappiness and the barriers that she’s constructed for herself. I think this book is less heartwarming than people expect it to be, but I think its realism and that psychology behind this book is much more interesting and instructive.

Read it or Skip it?

Olive Kitteridge is well worth a read. The HBO adaptation is quite good, but the book really is better. You could easily enjoy both. While Strout’s follow-up, Olive, Again , doesn’t really require you to first read Olive Kitteridge , this book is good enough that I would strongly recommend reading it first.

It is, however, a pretty nuanced and interior sort of book. If you’re looking for something highly entertaining or something that doesn’t require you to think at all, then this is probably the wrong choice. This is also not a upbeat, warm-hearted tale, despite is bright yellow cover.

I think this book is perfect for anyone who is feeling contemplative about the everyday aspects of life or someone looking for a book that is literary without being pretentious or inaccessible. It is a perfect quiet afternoon sort of novel, perfect with a cup of tea and your pet on your lap.

See Olive Kitteridge on Amazon .

Book Excerpt

Read the first pages of Olive Kitteridge

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I loved both Olive and Olive Again. I didn’t remember about the HBO series until I read this so now I have to check that out. Thanks for the reminder :-)

glad to hear it and thanks for reading! :)

The Olive books are two of my favorite books!

I hadn’t read the book, but I did see the series and loved it. The book is on my TBR list. Thanks for your thoughts.

Thanks for reading, Rosi! Hope all is well with you and that you get a chance to read it! :)

Review: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

BY Lucy Scholes

1st Jan 2015 Book Reviews

Not quite a novel, but not short stories either. Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge is a portrait of a small community in Maine, each character orbiting around the figure of Olive Kitteridge; local schoolteacher, wife and mother.

This isn’t one of those sentimental accounts of a woman who occupies pride of place in the community. Olive is a troubled soul, who rarely has a kind word for anyone.

She is a constant in many people’s lives, whether that of her put-upon husband Henry, the town’s pharmacist, or their son Christopher whom she loves despite failing to convey to him the depth of her affection; various students she’s taught over the years, both those she’s scared and those she’s inspired; or her neighbours.  

“It’s a rare achievement in a piece of fiction, and one that won Strout the Pulitzer Prize.”  

Olive doesn’t even take centre stage until the fourth chapter, ‘A Little Burst’, which provides an account of Christopher’s wedding as seen through his mother’s eyes.

Her disappointment at his choice of wife—Suzanne, a headstrong doctor from out of town—is compounded through her own eavesdropping.

Olive overhears a conversation in which Suzanne and a friend discuss her shortcomings, from her inappropriate dress to the misery she inflicted on Christopher as a child: “He’s had a hard time, you know,” Suzanne tells her friend. “And being an only child – that really sucked for him.”

“But something stunned and fat and black moves through her,” as Olive processes what she’s hearing, clearly catching a glimpse of herself through the eyes of others for the first time. It’s a moment of unassuming genius on Strout’s part, illuminating the vision that lies at the heart of the entire text.  

“She’s a woman you’ll begin the book hating… But, by the close of the final chapter, you’ll find your heart aching with sympathy for the woman, despite her many flaws.”

The novel is no straightforward depiction of one woman’s life. Instead our image, and with it our understanding of Olive Kitteridge is slowly pieced together, the final portrait a cumulative experience.

One that is able to capture the various complexities, weakness and strengths that constitute each and every human being. It’s a rare achievement in a piece of fiction, and one that won Strout the Pulitzer Prize.

A brave storyteller, she’s not afraid to leave Olive well alone for a chapter or two, allowing a host of other characters, and with them their own heartbreak and happiness, to become the focal point for a while instead.

Each mention of Olive, however fleeting, is carefully considered to add a different facet to her personality.  

Even if that mention is nothing more than an innocent observation of her deciding where she and Henry sit at a church concert, or the recollection by an ex-student of her gruff advice—“Don’t be scared of your hunger. If you’re scared of your hunger, you’ll just be one more ninny like everyone else”

She’s a woman you’ll begin the book hating. Her callous attitude towards her son and husband in the first chapter, combined with her thoughtless exasperation with a young pharmacy assistant who is grieving after her husband is killed in a freak hunting accident, is almost unbearable to read.

But, by the close of the final chapter, you’ll find your heart aching with sympathy for the woman, despite her many flaws. She’s someone who both struggles with but also deeply understands the “tricky business” that is existence.

“Olive’s private view is that life depends on what she thinks of as ‘big bursts’ and ‘little bursts.’ Big bursts are things like marriage or children, intimacies that keep you afloat, but these big bursts hold dangerous, unseen currents. Which is why you need the little bursts as well: a friendly clerk at Bradlee’s, let’s say, or the waitress at Dunkin’ Donuts who knows how you like your coffee.”

And she’s played a more crucial role in that of those around her than she’ll ever know.

Olive Kitteridge has been adapted into a stunning multi-Emmy Award-winning HBO mini series starring Frances McDormand in the title role:

Buy the HBO adaptation 

Elizabeth strout’s new novel, my name is lucy barton is out in february. pre-order it today.

Feature image via  Anchored to Sunshine

*This post contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.

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Reviews of Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio

Olive Kitteridge

by Elizabeth Strout

Critics' Opinion:

Readers' Opinion:

• Short Stories
• Mid-Atlantic, USA
• N.H. Vt. Maine
• 20th Century (multiple decades)
• Strong Women

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Book Summary

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition – its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires.

At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse. As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life – sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty. Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition – its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires.

Chapter 1 Pharmacy

For many years Henry Kitteridge was a pharmacist in the next town over, driving every morning on snowy roads, or rainy roads, or summertime roads, when the wild raspberries shot their new growth in brambles along the last section of town before he turned off to where the wider road led to the pharmacy. Retired now, he still wakes early and remembers how mornings used to be his favorite, as though the world were his secret, tires rumbling softly beneath him and the light emerging through the early fog, the brief sight of the bay off to his right, then the pines, tall and slender, and almost always he rode with the window partly open because he loved the smell of the pines and the heavy salt air, and in the winter he loved the smell of the cold. The pharmacy was a small two-story building attached to another building that housed separately a hardware store and a small grocery. Each morning Henry parked in the back by the large metal bins, and then entered the ...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

• Do you like Olive Kitteridge as a person?
• Have you ever met anyone like Olive Kitteridge, and if so, what similarities do you see between that person and Olive?
• How would you say Olive changed as a person during the course of the book?
• Discuss the theme of suicide. Which characters are most affected (or fascinated) by the idea of killing themselves?
• What freedoms do the residents of Crosby, Maine, experience in contrast with those who flee the town for bigger “ponds” (California, New York)? Does anyone feel trapped in Crosby, and if so, who? What outlets for escape are available to them?
• Why does Henry tolerate Olive as much as he does, catering to her, agreeing with her, staying even-keeled when she rants and ...
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• Oct. 15, 2019

OLIVE, AGAIN By Elizabeth Strout

Patrick Melrose, the deeply troubled yet savagely witty character who was breathed into existence by the English author Edward St. Aubyn , seized readers’ attention in no less than five autobiographical novels , published between 1992 and 2012. Frank Bascombe, Richard Ford’s stoic and droll protagonist, propelled four of Ford’s books, beginning with “ The Sportswriter ” (1986) and ending with “ Let Me Be Frank With You ” (2014). And Albert Schmidt, Louis Begley’s aging, endearing snob, was the tonic who lent the fizz to “ About Schmidt ” and two subsequent novels from 1996 to 2012.

Readers, therefore, have every right to be treated to a second novel about another irascible yet sympathetic loner — but this time a headstrong woman. Olive Kitteridge, the deliciously funny and unforgettable miserabilist at the heart of Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2008 novel that bore her name, fully deserves the sensitive and satisfying follow-up that Strout has written about her.

“Olive, Again,” a simple title that the matter-of-fact Olive would approve of, picks up not long after we left her in Strout’s first book of interrelated stories. This novel — which follows that same format — opens with the retired math teacher still living in the fictional coastal town of Crosby, Me. It’s a place where, on the surface, not much appears to happen, but there’s plenty going on behind the closed doors of the town’s old white clapboard and brick houses. Henry David Thoreau, were he to stroll through Crosby, would not recognize its Dunkin’ Donuts, yet he’d be familiar with the anguished Yankee souls at its booths pondering their lives of quiet desperation over coffee and crullers.

“Olive Kitteridge” ended with its title character embarking on an unlikely but tender relationship with Jack Kennison. It’s a sort of town-and-gown pairing. Olive is a grouchy local gossip who’s suspicious of outsiders, including someone who bears more than a slight resemblance to that occasional Mainer, President George W. Bush, “a born-again Christian with a cocaine addiction” and “stupid little eyes.” Jack, meanwhile, is an amused, extroverted and sometimes overbearing old-school Republican who taught at Harvard. Both have lost their spouses, and both, understandably, desire companionship — even if they’re equally turned off by each other. Jack, as readers might recall from “Olive Kitteridge,” is described by Olive as “a tall man with a big belly, slouching shoulders” and “a big flub-dub.” Olive, in Jack’s estimation, is not much of a catch either: “Tall, big; God, she was a strange woman.” Embracing her, he thinks, is like “kissing a barnacle-covered whale.”

Theirs is an on-off relationship, but in “Olive, Again,” Jack and Olive manage to evolve together. One of the strengths of Strout’s novel is that she realistically details the uncertainty and ambivalence, the revulsion and attraction, that these stubborn, no longer young people experience in each other’s company. “Go away, Jack,” Olive tells her new boyfriend when he enters the room she has slept in at his house. Her mind, though, seems to be saying something else: “ Please , she thought. But she did not know what she meant by that. Please , she thought again. Please.”

In “Olive Kitteridge,” the novel’s hero, opinionated and cutting, often treated her husband, Henry, like a rain-soaked lobster shack doormat before his death; her anger, we find out, had a lot to do with her anguish and repressed love for an old, dearly departed flame, Jim O’Casey. In “Olive, Again,” we see a new side of Olive. Yes, Henry, an amiable pharmacist, was wide-eyed and clueless, but he was as dependably kindhearted as Fred Rogers. Why did Olive rebuff his neediness? “What crime had he been committing,” she wonders, “except to ask for her love?” Jack, too, can’t shake his own sorrow over the death of his spouse, Betsy. His feelings are complicated by bitter memories of her dalliance with a college friend (never mind that Jack was carrying on his own affair on the side).

In other words, Olive and Jack are entitled to a fresh start. One roots for them, then, to set aside their differences and get along. Ever empathic and intuitive, Strout delves into their begrudging romance: “During the night they would shift, but always they were holding each other, and Jack thought of their large old bodies, shipwrecked, thrown up upon the shore — and how they held on for dear life! He would never have imagined it. The Olive-ness of her, the neediness of himself.”

Jack isn’t the only man in Olive’s life who loves her — and who must put up with her. Her son, Christopher, who lives in New York, pays a visit to Olive with his family. Years earlier, his wife, Ann, had tried to call Olive “Mom,” and now she greets her mother-in-law with a perfunctory “Hello, Olive.” Relations between them have become as warm as Penobscot Bay in February. It’s sad, certainly, but Strout knows how to find the comic in the tragic. When Ann feeds her baby, old-fashioned Olive is aghast, even “a tiny bit ill” when confronted with “a breast — just sticking out in plain view, right there in the kitchen, the nipple large and dark.” There’s plenty more humor in other stories: In an early one, the monotony of a baby shower is broken up when Olive frantically delivers a baby in the back of her car (signaling her own rebirth, of sorts), and in another, she endures a meal at a trendy new spot called Gasoline (one imagines Olive, a green thumb, being fond of a no-fuss Olive Garden).

“Olive, Again” doesn’t presume that the reader is familiar with “Olive Kitteridge,” and occasionally clunky recaps bring newcomers up to speed. Like its precursor, “Olive, Again” tells of the lives of a host of characters beyond Olive. One story, “The End of the Civil War Days,” has a daughter gently break the news to her parents — living improbably divided lives in one house — that she’s the “star” of a documentary: “Well. O.K. Now, listen, you guys. I’m a dominatrix.” “Cleaning,” one of the most resonant and haunting stories in the book, explores a teenage girl’s sexual awakening and her newfound passion for the piano. The story, like all those in the book, is about people connecting, or trying to connect, or failing to connect.

Always on the periphery of these stories, if not at their center, is Olive. Some in Crosby view her simply as “that old bag,” but Strout, as in “Olive Kitteridge,” is exquisitely attuned to the subtleties of her beloved character’s innermost thoughts; she makes us feel for Olive, giving us an intimate, multifaceted and touching portrait of someone suffering alone. It turns out, too, that Olive, for all her irritability (“Oh Godfrey”) and her dismissiveness (“Phooey to you”), can actually be a softy, something of a largely unacknowledged guardian angel to townspeople. Checking in on a younger woman who is gravely ill, Olive offers these words of comfort: “You know, Cindy, if you should be dying, if you do die, the truth is — we’re all just a few steps behind you.”

As cranky as she might be by nature, as gloomy as she is about her own failing health — wearing “diapers for old people … my foolish poopie panties ” — and as the state of her town and the country grows more ominous, with depression and drug addiction taking their toll and “that horrible orange-haired man” occupying the White House, Olive Kitteridge is capable of looking past her solitude, her looming fate, and finding some solace and beauty in the world, as when she gazes out her window on a June day: “And so she sat, watching the sky, the clouds high up there, and she looked down then at the roses, which were pretty amazing after just one year. She leaned forward and peered at the rosebush — why, there was another bud coming right behind that bloom! Boy, did that make her happy, the sight of that new fresh rosebud.”

John McMurtrie is the former books editor of The San Francisco Chronicle.

OLIVE, AGAIN By Elizabeth Strout 289 pp. Random House. $27.

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In 'olive, again,' elizabeth strout revisits an old friend.

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Olive, Again

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Ten years after Elizabeth Strout won a Pulitzer Prize for her eponymous collection of linked stories about Olive Kitteridge, a difficult but endearing, retired but not retiring middle school math teacher , she returns to coastal Maine with an update — which is just as wonderful as the original.

You don't have to have read Olive Kitteridge to appreciate Olive, Again, but you'll probably want to. Like a base coat of paint, it adds depth and helps the finish colors pop. Explaining the genesis of her sequel , Strout has written, "That Olive! She continues to surprise me, continues to enrage me, continues to sadden me, and continues to make me love her."

Well, that Elizabeth Strout! She continues to amaze (if no longer surprise) me. In book after book, from Amy and Isabelle to Anything is Possible, she's plumbed the heartaches and headaches of her characters, capturing their regrets, their moments of grace, and their flawed humanity with clear-eyed compassion. A master of the story cycle form which Sherwood Anderson put his stamp on with Winesburg, Ohio , Strout has at this point pretty much out-Winesburged him with her cumulative, time-lapse portrait of the people of Crosby, Maine.

The new novel starts shortly after Olive Kitteridge ended, when her ornery title character, lonely after the death of her husband Henry, struck up an unlikely friendship with Jack Kennison, a Harvard professor whom she and Henry had dismissed as one of those entitled, arrogant retirees from out-of-state. Her opinion changed after she found Jack collapsed on a riverside path, and Olive learned that he, too, was lonely following the recent death of his wife, and that he, too, regretted his alienation from his only child.

Author Interviews

'we've got more to say about you': olive kitteridge is back, and complex as ever.

'Anything Is Possible' Is Unafraid To Be Gentle

When Olive, Again opens, their promising connection has been lost, like a dropped call. We re-meet Jack first, a clever move which initially enables us to catch up with Olive from afar. Three weeks into their upsetting impasse, Jack heads to Portland in his snazzy red convertible for a drink. He replays his disappointments and feels that perhaps he deserves it all. He rues his reprehensible behavior toward his lesbian daughter, his wife's coldness, (which he sees in a new light after a disturbing email from her old boyfriend), and the surprising harassment lawsuit that forced his early retirement. At 74, Jack wonders, "How does one live an honest life?" He's jerked out of his miserable memories by a traffic cop who pulls him over for speeding — a situation that quickly escalates into a power play with class overtones.

Along with loneliness, class divides and snobbery are again at the forefront of Strout's concerns. Shifting over to irritable Olive, we learn that she's in high dudgeon over "that horrible old rich flub-dub of a man." She attends a baby shower she finds unbearably stupid, but ends up a hero for coolly helping with the emergency delivery of a guest's baby. Eager to tell someone about it, she calls her estranged son Christopher, who barely registers her achievement. Jack, she knows, will react differently.

Olive is a blunt busybody and a gossip, but she's also capable of kindness, and many of these stories involve the mutual benefits that accrue when people help each other. A dying young woman who feels abandoned by all her friends is grateful for Olive's visits, but wonders if the reason Olive confides in her about a fight with Jack is because Olive thinks she'll be dead soon. No, Olive says; it's because she feels comfortable talking to her.

Strout works a jaw-droppingly sad saga around to a moving takeaway when she revisits the Larkins, whose son — as we read in Olive Kitteridge — was incarcerated for life after stabbing a woman 29 times. When Suzanne Larkin, the grown daughter, returns to Crosby to meet with the family lawyer after her father's terrible death, we learn some equally terrible details about her family's history. But we're also reassured — as Suzanne and the lawyer are — by the uplift they find in their mutually comforting conversation.

Olive, Again repeatedly probes the limits of tolerance and the range of human behavior, sometimes boldly. A chapter called "The End of the Civil War Days," which involves a couple who have barely spoken to each other for 35 of their 42 years of marriage, draws surprising parallels between the playacting involved in the husband's Civil War re-enactments with their daughter's work as a dominatrix.

"The Poet," an outstanding chapter in Olive's often painful journey toward self-awareness, involves (like Anything is Possible ) a now-famous author's return to her hometown. When Olive runs into former U.S. Poet Laureate Andrea L'Rieux at the local coffee shop, she remembers her former student, one of eight kids in a French-Canadian Catholic family, as sad, lonely, and not particularly promising. Later, when someone anonymously sends Olive Andrea's poem based on their unfettered conversation, she's initially appalled at how the writer has nailed her and her loneliness. But Olive reluctantly realizes that "Andrea had gotten it better than she had, the experience of being another."

Here's the thing about Strout: Her characters endure some awful stuff — spousal abuse, parental neglect, the affronts of aging (including loss of independence and the need for adult diapers), blistering loneliness — but they're resilient. And if even harshly opinionated Olive can learn that a little compassion can change the picture, so can we. "What is your life like, Betty?" Olive asks a home health aide whose bumper sticker irks her. The question is key; it's the first step toward empathy. Olive, Again poignantly reminds us that empathy, a requirement for love, helps make life "not unhappy."

Book Reviews

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout: Book Review

Title: Olive Kitteridge Author: Elizabeth Strout Series: Olive Kitteridge #1 Genre: Contemporary Fiction Audience: Adult Format: Paperback

My Synopsis:

Olive Kitteridge is the story of a very complex woman, the story of a marriage, the story of a small town, the story of desperation, hope, kindness, cruelty, love, and betrayal. In short, it’s the story of humanity.

Olive is obviously at the heart of this collection of stories. It’s very easy for fictional characters to be all good or all bad. I had moments where I hated Olive, cheered her on, admired her, pitied her, and even loathed her. But if you look deeply inside all of us, isn’t that the way we would really feel about everyone? We see Olive’s warts, but we see that she’s constantly learning, even as she ages. There’s none of that business about old dogs and new tricks here. She changes and learns when she’s ready to, and I think that’s how we all are.

The other characters in the stories were interesting as well. They weren’t only there to highlight an aspect of Olive’s character, although they did serve that purpose too. Sometimes they had their own messages to share. I don’t feel like I can say more without giving their short stories away.

I can see why this won a Pulitzer. It’s a very enjoyable read with huge messages and themes packed in. There is so much to think over and discuss here. I recommend it for those in search of one of those books that will stick with you for a while. I know I’ll be thinking about Olive for some time to come.

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• Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, read by Anna Fields
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• The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson

Buy Olive Kitteridge  from  Malaprop’s Bookstore  in Asheville, NC.

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This was a great book and a great review.

You and I seem to have very similar tastes in books…I'm so glad I discovered your blog! (I'm now a Follower!)

I would highly recommend it as a book club read.

Sounds like a good bookclub read.

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Book review | 'Olive Kitteridge' author Elizabeth Strout continues powerful storytelling

When Elizabeth Strout was in second grade, there was a boy, very poor, with no friends and dirt behind his ears.

“Our teacher said to him, ‘You are not so hard up that you can’t afford a bar of soap,’ and he turned deep red,” the author told me. “That child has stayed with me.”

The title character of her slim new novel, “My Name is Lucy Barton,” is an homage to that boy, “ to these very rural families who are outcasts because they are poor,” Strout said. “Every town has one, and probably a lot more, now.”

Strout’s latest narrator grew up in a remote and stark Illinois town, where she lived in a cramped and cold garage beside her great uncle’s house with her parents, brother and sister.

Lucy stayed warm by staying in school long after classes ended, doing homework and reading until the janitor nudged her out.“

Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life, and it was always there,” Lucy says, “ hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me.”

Her studies allowed her to avoid the dysfunction at home, and it would propel her out, and away, never to return: A full scholarship to a Chicago university; marriage to a well-to-do classmate; two daughters, a writing career and a life in New York City.

But when Lucy ends up in the hospital with an infection, her husband flies her mother out — her first airplane trip — to keep her company.

They connect the usual way: gossip about the town and the people Lucy escaped long ago, but can’t shake from her being.

In the pauses and allusions, the brief laughs and quiet smiles shared by mother and daughter, Strout captures the ragged and silken threads of love. The push and pull between mothers and daughters and the things we learn to live with, or around.

It’s familiar ground for Strout, who made her mark with another mother-daughter novel, “Amy and Isabelle,” in 2000; and whose 2008 book, “Olive Kitteridge” won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was made into an HBO miniseries starring Frances McDormand that won four Emmys.

Strout spoke by phone from her home on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where she was stretched on her couch and mourning David Bowie (“I just turned 60 the other day and I am like, ‘Oh, God!’ But he went out his way. So yea for him.”)

There’s a lot of Lucy Barton in her, Strout said. She grew up in rural Maine, went to college, got a law degree, married and lives in the big city as a writer.

“Honestly and truly, every character I wrote, they are all me in some way,” she said. “They have to be, because I am the only person I know. That’s the truth of it.”

As a child, Strout realized that she would never see the world, except through her own eyes.

“I was so frustrated with that,” she said. “And so as I began to read, I remember thinking, ‘Oh, I have had that thought.’ Books have always made me realize, ‘Oh, this is what it’s like to be another person.’“

I write because I have always wanted to be another person, but I make it up from what I have observed closely about other people.”

Strout has made her mark with those close observations, and for putting to the page what people don’t usually say in public.

She changes gears, somewhat, in “Lucy Barton,” in which the characters speak in veiled ways about clear dysfunction, like a quick slideshow: Lucy, locked inside a truck, screaming. Her adult brother, reading children’s books and sleeping in a neighbor’s barn.

Her character makes passing mention of “the Thing,” when her father — a World War II veteran scarred by an experience in Germany — becomes “very anxious and not in control of himself.”

Her mother, who doesn’t sleep much, says she can catnap, calling it something “you learn to do when you don’t feel safe.”

Readers can fill in the blanks, Strout said.

“I have always believed that everyone will bring their own story to whatever book they are reading,” she said. “But this book, particularly, I was aware that this was more porous than my others and that leaves more room for people to bring their own experience.

“I don’t want to press anybody’s face into things, either,” she said. “I just don’t want to be that kind of writer. People can do that and they do it beautifully. I am more interested in the essence of people.”

Strout had been writing for decades before her first novel was published. There was a time when she was working as a waitress and writing, “and I never got a nibble and I began to think to myself, ‘Oh my God, I am going to be 58 and I’m going to be a cocktail waitress, completely unpublished and that is going to be pathetic.’”

She went to law school and got a job as a legal-aid lawyer.

“I was doing what I wanted to do, but I was so bad at it,” she said. “I remember standing in the backyard, thinking, ‘I can be a bad lawyer or a 58-year-old waitress who tried writing and gave it everything, and that’s going to be fine.’

“If I am going to die, I will die knowing I tried with my whole heart.”

She succeeded, and as her fifth novel is launched — and “The Burgess Boys” is in development by none other than Robert Redford for HBO — her worries have subsided.

“I’ve got to tell you, it’s a little scary,” Strout said. “I’m sure I’m going to die tomorrow."

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, a complex life: hbo’s unforgettable “olive kitteridge”.

Few films have tapped into the seemingly conflicting emotions that exist in the human soul at exactly the same moment as HBO’s stellar “Olive Kitteridge,” a delicate, beautiful mini-series starring Frances McDormand, Richard Jenkins , Rosemarie DeWitt , Peter Mullan , Bill Murray and more. Cinematic fiction is so often about characters with simply defined emotions. This protagonist is happy. This villain is vengeful. This hero is in love. It’s much harder, and takes actors of the caliber assembled for this production, to sketch characters who both love and hate at the same time; who feel regretful and content simultaneously; who wouldn’t change a thing but can’t shake their depression. Stretched out over 4 hours on two nights, with each hour playing like a distinct chapter in a book, “Olive Kitteridge” provides the richness of character and setting that is more common in narrative fiction than cinema.

The episodic, nearly Raymond Carver-esque feel of “Olive Kitteridge” is due to the fact that writer Jane Anderson has adapted the mini-series from a collection of short stories by Elizabeth Strout, which won the Pulitzer Prize. The stories span 25 years, and six of them have been adapted into four episodes here. Each episode feels focused in its own narrative, with different characters taking center stage but all of the narrative threads play into the unpredictability of life and the complexity of human emotion. As the HBO tagline says, “There’s no such thing as a simple life.”

Take the second episode, easily the best of the four and one of the best hours of TV this year, which spends a lot of time on two elements—the return of a suicidal young man to town, coinciding with the wedding of Chris Kitteridge (John Gallagher). Olive is faced with stark reminders of the past and future in a former friend of her son in whom she can see the open wounds of his mother’s depression, and that ultimate emotional whirlpool that is a child’s wedding. There are unexpected life interruptions in “Olive Kitteridge” that don’t feel manipulative. When a character dies unexpectedly or saves a life unexpectedly, it fits into the narrative fabric of the overall piece. And reflects something about reality rarely captured. A life-saver may have been planning to kill himself mere moments before. The start of a happy life can be suddenly ended by a tragedy. Kids get married, kids get divorced. We can’t predict the future and we can’t live in the past. We may think someone is perfect for someone else, only to watch them grow up into a manipulative asshole. We may think someone is the wrong fit, but not be able to say so.

Of course, all of this rich subtext wouldn’t work without the kind of complex performers that Lisa Cholodenko (“ The Kids Are All Right ”) expertly assembled for this project. It’s undeniable that Kitteridge, with her blend of world-weariness and cynicism, fits like a glove for Frances McDormand , but that doesn’t make what she does here any less remarkable. The opening scene of the second episode, in which Olive is basically intervening in a suicide and knows it but can’t say it, is a master class in acting. It’s one of the best scenes of the year in all of television. Richard Jenkins is a perfect acting partner for her, offsetting Olive’s pessimism with a wide-eyed will to see the good in everyone. In the first episode, Jenkins’ Henry hires a new employee ( Zoe Kazan ) at his pharmacy, and develops a clear attraction for the naïve girl who is the opposite of his bitter wife. The way Jenkins plays Henry’s longing for a bit more joy while still maintaining the character of a man who seems unlikely to do anything about his new feelings contains real depth. Bill Murray doesn’t show up until night two, as a widower who draws closer to Olive. Even small roles, like those filled out by DeWitt, Ann Dowd , John Gallagher and more, are expertly cast and directed.

“Olive Kitteridge” won’t be for everyone. There are long scenes of repetitive dialogue that too often reinforces the happy-sad duality in the Kitteridge marriage, and the piece could arguably have been a bit more visually striking. I also wonder if the mini-series wouldn’t have been stronger overall with more episodes, and their accompanying time to invest in supporting characters who sometimes feel like devices more than people. (It was once considered for a whole season, which I think would have been better—four hours feels like both too little time to really get to know the whole town and too much time to get to know just the Kitteridges.) Also, the third episode is constructed around a major, unexpected event that feels overly scripted. I liked “Olive” more in its quiet beats than its loud ones, the latter often feel like narrative constructions designed to reveal the buried secrets, resentments and feelings just below the surface. As it has to be, “Olive Kitteridge” is structured to capture the major events of a 25-year span, the moments that will be remembered on a death bed. But it’s the truthful writing and performances between those moments that make it memorable, that make it something remarkably close to life.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Olive Kitteridge review: characters shine but pace is slack – even for 70s Maine

This literary adaptation is painstakingly characterised and carefully acted, but the pacing feels stagnant, with a high misery quotient

W e can learn a lot based on the opening credits of Olive Kitteridge , HBO’s latest miniseries that aired parts one and two on Sunday 3 November, and will conclude with parts three and four on Monday 4 November at 9pm ET. As the credits appear we see close-ups of familiar items magically transformed. The powder falling down on a donut mimics a snowfall, and then the snowy fields of Maine in the wintertime. A glass of whiskey filled with ice first looks like a glacier, then just a highball glass; but when the glass is moved, the wet ring on a napkin seems to carry the outline of a faint smile.

This is the business of Olive Kitteridge, which features the title character, expertly played by Frances McDormand (who also executive-produces along with Tom Hanks). As she goes about her life in a small, coastal town in Maine during the 70s and 80s we focus on the small things: Valentine’s cards, the mood created by a live pianist at the bar, getting annoyed at your husband for cutting tulips out of the yard. Those small things become huge things: a sign of infidelity, a warning of mental illness, a betrayal of love lost. And with the passage of time those things become small again or at least change into something where the emotion is farther from the surface.

Around all of it is the complicating presence of Olive. She is not exactly what you would call warm, though she does have compassion within her, helping out a mentally ill neighbor (Rosemary DeWitt) and her son (Cory Michael Smith) when he comes back to town years later. Olive, who doesn’t quite win the audience over or achieve enough to be considered an antihero, is what you would call complicated. She can keep a young man from killing himself one night and, after overhearing an insult about her dress, commit petty theft against her daughter-in-law the next. Finally here is a woman who can be as messed up as any male on television. In fact, like Larry David before her, she is downright annoying, though not nearly as comical.

What’s odd about the structure of this piece, adapted from the Pulitzer prize-winning short story collection by Elizabeth Strout , is that Olive isn’t really the centrepiece. The whole first hour, rather, follows her husband Henry (Richard Jenkins) the town pharmacist and his relationship with his employee Denise (a hardly recognizable Zoe Kazan), a young widow he is falling in love with. Olive’s own cheating is also hinted at, and while she lashes out at her husband for his emotional slights, she expects her own to be taken in his stride. Olive thinks that she can hide in the background in her own life just as she seems to in this story, steering the events around her even if she’s not the one with the most agency.

Olive is a fitting name for a protagonist, since that seems to be the predominant colour palette. Directed by Lisa Cholodenko ( The Kids Are All Right ) the film is a tapestry of drabness, with the washed-out earth tones of the 70s lending themselves nicely to a stark New England town where everyone seems to be wanting more but settling for the little dramas that their life has to offer.

The characters are the best part of the show, each obsessed with their own happiness and unable to do what they need to attain it. Olive herself is always thinking about mental health, worried that she suffers from the same depression as her father, even convincing herself that she does, despite being highly functioning. She doesn’t seem sad, just chronically displeased and unable to abide by the social rules she finds ridiculous (Larry David again).

While it’s the people and their complicated simplicity that will keep viewers tuning in, the pace in parts seems to be a bit slack, taking its time to get to the emotional and narrative center of each hour. It doesn’t feel deliberate, but rather stagnant. Also the misery parade seems to get a little too baroque at times. At one point widow Denise says, “I have no one left to send greeting cards to except for my Aunt Jean, and she’s blind.” Even Olive’s prickliness can be ridiculously outrageous, like when her husband asks if she’s going to leave him and she responds, “Henry, you could make a woman sick.”

It might be a stray line for her, but a scene her husband will never forget. Those are the things, those small moments – a missing earring, a name carved on the side of a dresser, sitting across from your partner eating your favourite donuts, a very uncomfortable dinner party – that make up a life. They become large and small and large again, the shifting scope causing us to examine our own lives, and whether or not we can possibly be as great, as happy, as miserable, or as annoying as dear old Ms Kitteridge.

• US television
• Frances McDormand

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Olive Kitteridge

57 pages • 1 hour read

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Published in 2008, Olive Kitteridge is an unconventional novel by Elizabeth Strout that interlinks 13 tales about the people of Crosby, Maine. The novel is a collection of short stories tied together by the unifying element of titular character Olive Kitteridge. The novel won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and HBO created a mini-series of the book in 2014. Because of its construction, Strout’s novel is less about its plot than it is about its characters and themes and how they fit into Olive’s life and worldview.

This guide is based on the 2008 Kindle edition.

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Content Warning: The source material contains discussions of suicide, alcohol use disorder, and eating disorders, and references to self-harm.

Plot Summary

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The opening chapter, “Pharmacy,” features Henry Kitteridge , Olive Kitteridge’s husband, who is growing close with his young new assistant, Denise Thibodeau, through their working relationship at his pharmacy. When Denise’s husband, who is also named Henry, is accidentally killed during a hunting trip, Henry strives to assist the hapless Denise adjust to independent life. Eventually, however, despite Henry’s promise that he will take care of her, Denise marries the pharmacy’s delivery man, Jerry, and they move to Texas. The story ends with the revelation that Henry has long been aware, since Jim O’Casey, Olive’s coworker, was killed in a car accident, that Olive had at the very least an emotional affair with Jim.

In “Incoming Tide,” Kevin Coulson returns to Crosby for the first time since he was a child, where he intends to die by suicide. As he sits in his car looking out at the sea , however, Olive Kitteridge, Kevin’s former math teacher, greets him. She invites herself into the passenger seat and forces conversation—they discuss her own father’s death by suicide, Kevin’s mother’s death by suicide, and Olive’s son’s struggle with depression. Outside, they watch Patty Howe, Kevin’s childhood friend, walking beside the harbor. Olive notes that Patty has had several miscarriages. Right as Olive seems about to leave, Patty falls into the water; Kevin dives in after and fights to save Patty from drowning.

In “The Piano Player,” Angie O’Meara is a piano player with alcoholism. On noticing that her ex-boyfriend Simon has come to the bar where she plays, Angie notes that Simon was the only person who ever knew that Angie’s mother had “taken money from men” (55), which the text indicates was for sex work. Angie takes a rare break from her playing to call Malcolm Moody to end their decades-long affair. After Angie returns to playing, Simon reveals to Angie that after they broke up, Angie’s mother propositioned him in Boston and that, as a result, he has always pitied Angie. Angie gives little reaction, losing herself to the music. Although Malcolm berates her when she leaves, instructing her to call him tomorrow, she arrives home certain she will not.

In “A Little Burst,” Olive Kitteridge’s son, Christopher, is marrying a woman named Suzanne. Olive overhears Suzanne mocking her dress and then, worse, implying that Christopher’s childhood was not easy. Furious at what Olive perceives as Suzanne’s know-it-all attitude, she takes a pen, draws over Suzanne’s sweater, and steals a few other items of clothing. The act gives Olive a little burst of joy, and she resolves, if possible, to continue fostering Suzanne’s self-doubt.

“Starving” is told from the point of view of Harmon (no surname given), who is having an affair with Daisy Foster, a local widow. Out one day, Harmon notices Nina White and Tim Burnham, a young couple that strikes him as charming. Months later, he reads in the paper that Tim and Nina were arrested in a drug bust. Harmon finds Nina at Daisy’s house; despite the best efforts of Harmon, Nina, and Olive Kitteridge, Nina eventually dies as a result of anorexia. In the wake of the tragedy , fearing loneliness, Harmon confesses his love for Daisy. She accepts, and Harmon rents Tim and Nina’s old apartment to share with her, though he remains uncertain if he’ll tell his wife or simply wait for the inevitable fallout.

In “A Different Road,” after a dinner with friends, Henry and Olive Kitteridge stop at a hospital so that Olive can use the restroom. After a bit of wheedling from the anxious nurse, Olive consents to the doctor performing a brief check-up. Just as Olive changes into her gown, however, armed men appear and take everyone hostage. The police eventually arrive and break up the situation, but not before Olive and Henry have a pivotal argument.

“Winter Concert” focuses on Bob and Jane Houlton. At the titular concert, during intermission, the couple talks with the parents of their daughter’s friend, who mentions having met Bob in the Miami airport. On the drive home, Jane demands the truth. Bob admits that the woman with whom he had an affair many years ago contracted cancer, so he went to visit her. At home, a stunned Jane admits her fear of mortality, seemingly resolved to stay with her husband despite his infidelity.

“Tulips” opens with Olive’s memories of the Larkin family, who disappeared into their house after their son brutally murders a woman. Olive—her divorced son now in California and her husband nonresponsive after a stroke—receives a letter from Louise Larkin and decides to visit. Louise, who has startling insights into Olive’s state of mind, deeply unnerves Olive. Olive leaves on realizing that Louise’s mental health is impacted, and though Olive tries to phone her son about the event, her son is only disappointed that Olive went at all.

In “Basket of Trips,” Olive helps arrange Ed Bonney’s funeral; his widow, Marlene Bonney, was Olive’s student. Marlene’s relative, Kerry Monroe, gets drunk, and Marlene leaves to put her to bed. Olive finds Marlene holding a knife next to the passed-out Kerry, and Marlene tells Olive that Kerry has just admitted to having had an affair with Ed. Marlene relinquishes the knife, but she is most embarrassed not of having threatened to kill Kerry, but of having ever pretended with her husband who has a terminal illness that they might go on vacations together.

“Ship in a Bottle,” told largely from Winnie Harwood’s perspective , opens with her older sister, Julie Harwood, heartbroken after her fiancée, Bruce, left her on her wedding day. Her mother, Anita, criticizes Julie for crying. Bruce attempts to reconnect with Julie, but when Bruce drives to the house, Anita fires a rifle at him. One day, Winnie finds a note from Julie, asking her to tell her parents that Julie has gone for a walk; Julie is, in fact, catching the bus to Boston to be with Bruce. Winnie lies for her sister, but she quickly understands that this lie has changed her own relationship with her mother forever.

In “Security,” Olive travels to New York to visit Christopher and his new wife, Ann, who is pregnant with Christopher’s child. There, on learning that their upstairs tenant has the surname O’Casey, Olive remembers Jim O’Casey, a man with whom she had an emotional affair. Despite initially doing well, when Olive realizes she has spilled ice cream on herself, her fears of her own uselessness and mortality surface. When she announces that she will leave early, and Christopher does not attempt to stop her, an argument breaks out between them. While Olive rages and weeps, Christopher remains calm, unpacking his perspective of his childhood, which she is not able to hear. A taxi arrives, taking Olive away to the airport.

In “Criminal,” unemployed Rebecca Brown lives with her boyfriend, David. She complains to a doctor about feeling ill, but a series of tests reveal no problems. Rebecca watches the police arrest patrons of a bar outside their home. She gathers some items and a cigarette lighter and leaves the house, pondering her own possible arrest.

In “River,” Olive finds Jack Kennison , an elderly widower who retired to Crosby, collapsed on the ground during her daily walk. She sits with him until he recovers, and from there, the two develop a tenuous relationship. After a brief fight, in which Olive struggles to admit to her feelings and finds fault with Jack’s politics, they do not speak for a time. Then, Jack calls, inviting Olive to his house. She finds him in bed. He invites her to join him, and they reconcile. Olive reflects that she is not quite ready to die.

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The Best Short Story Collections That Keep You Reading

Posted: April 28, 2024 | Last updated: April 28, 2024

Short story collections offer the perfect medium for fiction writers to craft compelling, affecting narratives that simply may not warrant a full-length novel to explore the ideas. The short story collection’s compact form delivers concise, impactful ideas and can free authors to explore a multitude of themes, characters, story arcs and styles within a single collection. Collections of short fiction have allowed writers like Edgar Allen Poe, Flannery O’Connor and James Baldwin to experiment with different tones, voices and plot devices while providing readers with gripping but approachable standalone stories.

These 8 short story collections are extremely readable, cover a variety of genres and authors and may give you a newfound appreciation of writers you already love.

1) Homesick For Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh

From one of the most compelling, propulsive voices in contemporary fiction, Moshfegh’s 2017 short story collection is an eclectic compendium of some of her best fiction work—much of which was previously published in places like The Paris Review , The New Yorker and Vice . Exceedingly atmospheric and permeated with Moshfegh’s hallmark sordid wit, Homesick For Another World interrogates the ubiquitous afflictions of the human condition and our capacity for cruelty through the collection’s generally amoral, misanthropic protagonists. A highly anticipated follow-up to Moshfegh’s breakout debut novel Eileen , Homesick was later named a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 and drew innumerable comparisons to the work of renowned authors like Mary Gaitskill and Flannery O’Connor.

2) Earth Angel by Madeline Cash

An electric debut from author Madeline Cash, Earth Angel is a collection of short stories that rockets through the reader’s imagination like a fever dream. Teeming with chimeric vignettes synthesizing the mundanely sinister realities of a capitalist culture with cataclysmic doomsday tropes, Earth Angel manages to be both endlessly funny and deeply poignant without feeling didactic. Cash both parodies and embraces the myopic stylings dominating popular fiction in a way that never feels malicious, but rather like the playful ribbing of a writer that refuses to take herself too seriously. Irreverent, compelling and laugh-out-loud funny, Earth Angel marks the emergence of one of contemporary fiction’s most exciting new figures.

3) Bliss Montage by Ling Ma

A surrealist collection from Severance author Ling Ma, Bliss Montage marks Ma’s first published short story collection after her phenomenal debut novel (which has no relation to the recent Apple TV+ series, by the way). Uncanny, otherworldly and above all evocative— Bliss Montage contains eight wildly different stories each touching on universal themes of the human experience against phantasmagoric, though eerily familiar backdrops. Ranging from a tale of two friends bonded by their shared use of a drug that turns you invisible to the story of a tourist caught up in a fatalistic healing ritual, Ma’s unforgettable collection manages to be both ingeniously unique and undoubtedly universal at once. Somehow both outlandish and quotidian, Bliss Montage keeps readers wrapped up in Ma’s captivating prose from start to end.

4) Daddy by Emma Cline

A thrilling examination of unspoken power structures (predominantly male power in a patriarchal society), Daddy by Emma Cline offers glimpses into the unexamined lives of each story's protagonist, often playfully alluding to, but never explicitly pointing to, a certain moral paradigm. Fraught familial dynamics, imbalanced romantic relationships and moral nuance permeate Cline’s collection, and each story offers a taste of her infectious prose and incisive style. The ten stories on offer often end achingly realistically, rejecting a tidy, personally gratifying ending—making each story appear as a certain tableau harkening to an idea rather than a traditional beginning, middle and end. Suspenseful, richly descriptive and engrossing—Cline’s collection begs to be devoured.

5) Skeleton Crew by Stephen King

From the King of Horror himself, Skeleton Crew is a 1985 collection comprised of two novellas, 18 short stories and two poems. A mix of works both previously published and unpublished, Skeleton Crew notably contains King’s 1980 novella The Mist , which was later adapted into a 2007 film starring Thomas Jane and Marcia Gay Harden. Alongside King’s trademark tales of terror are more subdued works like a poem written for his son and a notes section offering readers context and background on some of the stories in the collection. Many of the stories in Skeleton Crew were adapted into short films through King’s Dollar Baby agreement, wherein King permitted aspiring filmmakers to adapt one of his short stories for just $1 while he retained the rights. Sadly, the Dollar Baby Program was officially disbanded at the end of 2023.

6) First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami

First published in July 2020, First Person Singular is a collection of eight short stories each told from, you guessed it, the first-person singular perspective. Written by Japanese author Haruki Murakami, First Person Singular explores themes of nostalgia and lost love through stories from the perspective of mostly unnamed, middle-aged male protagonists believed to be based largely on the author himself, though some are more fantastical than others. Ranging from slice-of-life stories wherein the narrator reminisces on a past relationship, to the tale of a monkey doomed to fall in love with human women, the stories employ a myriad of hallmark Murakami techniques like magical realism, music, nostalgia and aging.

7) The Houseguest and Other Stories by Amparo Dávila

The first collection by beloved Mexican author Amparo Dávila to be translated into English, The Houseguest is a collection of 12 short stories touching on themes of obsession, paranoia and fear primarily featuring female protagonists and narrators. Often compared to horror writers like Edgar Allen Poe and Shirley Jackson, Dávila’s writing often deals with abstract feelings of dread and paranoia, imbuing them with magical realism to craft jarring, transfixing narratives that seem both eerily familiar and preternatural. Each tale menaced by an unseen, pernicious force, Dávila’s writing revels in its ambiguity with no straightforward answers. The Houseguest is an anxiety-inducing page-turner which will keep readers on the edge of their seats.

8) Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Though technically a short story cycle (a collection of self-contained short stories arranged to convey a concept or theme greater than the sum of its atomized parts), Olive Kitteridge consists of 13 stories each taking place in the fictional town of Crosby, Maine. The stories predominantly center on Olive Kitteridge, a brusque but caring retired school teacher and longtime resident of Crosby. Other stories show Olive only as a secondary character or in a cameo capacity and are from the point of view of other townsfolk. Winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the collection was later adapted into a critically acclaimed miniseries starring Frances McDormand, Richard Jenkins, Zoe Kazan and Bill Murray. Profound, heartbreaking and human, Olive Kitteridge is an unforgettable first-read that will still impact you even if you watched the miniseries before.

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