Olive Kitteridge door Elisabeth Strout

Bookreport Olive Kitteridge 

Background Information on the author

Elizabeth Strout was born on January 6^th 1956 in Portland, Maine. For generations, her family lived in Maine, and they (almost) never left the state. Elizabeth felt trapped in Maine, so when she finished high school, she left. Yet, many years later, she returned to Maine with her second husband. Maine has served as the setting for many books of Elizabeth, such as Olive Kitteridge. Just like Elizabeth when she was young, Olive Kitteridge could not leave Maine.[1]
From a young age, Elizabeth observed others and wrote what she saw in notebooks. She learned this from her mother, with whom she observed others in a parking lot and they tried to understand what they were doing and thinking. By watching others, Elizabeth has spent much time imagining she was someone else. Characters in the book Olive Kitteridge are therefore based on people Elizabeth came across or empathized with in daily life or family members, such as a customer in the store she worked at, or her grandfather who committed suicide. All these characters have their own setbacks, joys, thoughts, and troubles which were merged into different chapters of the book Olive Kitteridge. A writer from the New York Times said after reading Olive Kitteridge “There’s simply the honest recognition that we need to understand people, even if we can’t stand them”. [2]
Writing short stories (besides books) is another profession of Elizabeth that influenced Olive Kitteridge; every chapter in the book reflects another short story. Not only the characters, but also the point of view seems influenced by her observation of others; as an omniscient narrator, Elizabeth describes the complicated lives of different characters. Due to the strong identification with the often recognizable lives from the characters, Olive Kitteridge is rewarded with many prizes, such as the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the Premio Bancarella Prize.

Introduction

I chose to read the book Olive Kitteridge, because it appealed to me that the book consist of several separate stories. I sometimes have difficulty reading thick English books, because I lose my focus rather quickly, whereas when the text is divided into loose stories, I manage to read the book better.

Before I started reading the book, I expected it would not be very interesting, considering the description of the book stated it was about the life of a retired teacher. I therefore expected there would not be much tension in the book. I was wrong. There was indeed tension in the book, for instance in chapter 2 (incoming tide), where Kevin, a former student of Olive, jumps into the water to save a former fellow student.

I hoped that the book was easier to read because of the loose stories, but during reading the book I found out that I needed time to switch to a new story, which sometimes made it confusing. Nevertheless I liked the variety of the different stories. In short, it had advantages and disadvantages. I therefore slightly have to change my positive expectation about the structure of the book I had before I started reading.

Summary

The stories are about life in a village in Maine and the daily events that the citizens experience. Generally, these stories are about death, marriage, divorce and other problems that many adults have to deal with.

Because the book consists of several detached stories, it is unmanageable to make a general summary, because each story is completely different. As a consequence I will make a short summary about each chapter:

1. Pharmacy

Henry reflects on a time where he owned a pharmacy, and employed Denise. They seemed to fall in love with each other, but it didn’t work out and they separate ways.

1. Incoming Tide

Kevin returns to his hometown to commit suicide, but ends up having an unintended conversation with Olive. While chatting, a girl falls into the water. Kevin jumps in to save her.

1. The Piano Player

Angela is a piano player in a warehouse with stage fright. She recognizes Simon, her ex-boyfriend. Simon tells Angela that after they broke up, her mother propositioned him.

1. A Little Burst

Christopher marries Suzanne. At the wedding, Olive overhears Suzanne gossiping about her. Olive takes revenge by ruining Suzanne’s sweater and stealing her bra and shoe.

1. Starving

Harmon starts a sexual relationship with Daisy, since his wife is no longer interested in sex. Nina is moving in with Daisy after her boyfriend Tim broke up with her. Nina has anorexia and is eventually killed by a heart attack.

1. A Different road

Olive stops at a hospital to use the bathroom. While a nurse unexpectedly examines her, two men invade the hospital and keep people hostage. Olive and Henry get into a fight that creates tension in their relationship.

1. Winter Concert

Bob and Jane visit a concert. Jane founds out Bob cheated on her but eventually forgives him, because they have nothing but each other.

1. Tulips

Christopher and his wife move to California. His wife leaves him shortly after. Henry suffers from a heart attack and Olive gets depressive thoughts.

1. Basket of Trips

Olive attends the wake of Ed Bonney and is asked by Marlene to remove a basket full of brochures of trips they were planning to go on.

1. Ship in a Bottle

Bruce tells Julie he doesn’t want to marry her. Despite her mother's disapproval, she leaves for Boston to visit Bruce.

1. Security

While Olive visits Christopher in California, they get into an argument about his upbringing.

1. Criminal

Rebecca develops kleptomania and pyromania after her father dies.

1. River

After Henry’s death, Olive meets a man she starts a new relationship with, because they are both alone.

Most important text fragments

As a result of the many short stories in the book, it is hard to point out the two most important text fragments, since each chapter has its own important moment. For this reason I will give two text fragments which stood out most for me.

1. “She looks at the Magic Markers lying on the bureau, next to Suzanne’s folders. (...) Looking around the invaded bedroom, she wants to mark every item brought in here over the last month.”[3]

At the wedding of Olive’s son Christopher and his bride Suzanne, Olive overhears a conversation Suzanne has with her friend. In this conversation, Suzanne talks about Olive in a bad way, for instance calling Olive’s dress ugly. Olive feels offended and wants to take revenge for gossiping about her. Therefore, Olive colours with a black Magic Marker on Suzanne’s sweater, she steals one of her shoes and she takes her bra.

This text fragment stood out for me because I think this is one of the funniest parts of the story. I was laughing out loud when I read that she was taking revenge in this childish way.

This part does not really represent Olive’s character, since she usually is serious and quite grumpy. It does represent her urge to protect her son, because she always wants the very best for him, even when it comes to woman. I often noticed this theme in the book.

1. “(…) He would like this moment to be forever: the dark-haired woman calling for safety, now holding him with a fierceness that matched the power of the ocean. (…) Look how she wanted to live, look how she wanted to hold on.” [4]

Kevin and Olive are chatting in Kevin’s car, when they suddenly see that Patty is drowning. Kevin jumps into the water to help her. The water rises quickly and they almost drown, but they hold each other tightly.

Kevin is suicidal and actually came back to his hometown to commit suicide, but now that he is holding on to Patty so strongly, he seems to be passionate about Patty's will to stay alive. It appears to be a reversal in his deep depressive thoughts. Suicide is an important theme in the book. Perhaps this is because Elizabeth Strout’s grandfather committed suicide in his 50s. [5].

I chose this fragment since this part was very thrilling, due to the expectation that they would drown.

Evaluation and conclusion

The book has surprised me positively. The stories were exciting, varied, funny and profound. However, I do not think the book was marvellous. Sometimes parts of the text were too detailed and too philosophical. This made the book dreary and hard to read at times. The verbosity is already noticeable at the first page of the book:

“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 let to the pharmacy” [6]  This long-windedness often bored me.

Every now and then the book was unclear. Most of the time, this was at the beginning of chapters, since a completely new setting began with different characters.

Although I am definitely surprised by the book in a positive way, I would not recommend it to others. This is because the book was about things that do not appeal to me, such as divorces and death. If you are interested in daily problems and events that play in the life of adults, I do recommend this book.

[1] https://www.elizabethstrout.com/about/ 

[2] http://lectures.org/podcast/elizabeth-strout/  

[3] Olive Kitteridge, chapter 4 – A Little Burst, page 88.

[4] Olive Kitteridge, chapter 2 – Incoming Tide, page 56. 

[5] https://gulfnews.com/entertainment/books/growing-up-in-the-shadow-of-a-family-suicide-1.2256821  

[6] Olive Kitteridge, chapter 1 – Pharmacy, page 1