Olive Kitteridge : : a Novel in Stories

Locations
Call Number: Fiction / Strout, Elizabeth, Adult Book / Fiction / General / Strout, Elizabeth
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Malletts Creek Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Strout, Elizabeth	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Strout, Elizabeth	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Strout, Elizabeth	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Strout, Elizabeth	4-week checkout	Due 05-10-2024
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Strout, Elizabeth	4-week checkout	Due 05-16-2024
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Strout, Elizabeth	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Olive Kitteridge, a retired teacher, deplores the changes taking place in her little town of Crosby, Maine.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Library Journal Review
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Summary / Annotation
Table of Contents
Fiction Profile
Excerpt
Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

An unusual but compelling novel submitted by asandrews on July 8, 2014, 8:13am This novel is unusually structured - it is fundamentally about one woman, but sketches out her story via a bunch of vignettes from other people in her small new england town. If you like character development and find it important, more so even than plot, you will probably like this book. The characters are believable and real. I liked this book a lot.

Really good submitted by Lucy S on July 26, 2014, 11:31am These connected stories are very well written and worth reading. The characters, though not always likeable are quite complex.

olive kitteridge submitted by hcf on August 2, 2014, 4:33pm i normally don't like "short stories" but these all weave together beautifully

Different from any other short story collection submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on July 2, 2015, 10:38am I generally don't enjoy short story collections, precisely because they are choppy and don't allow me to immerse in the storyline or characters. This may be the first exception to that general truth, because while it is a collection of short stories, they all thread through the singular character of Olive. This really is a novel written in chapters that tell us Olive's story from a wide variety of different viewpoints (even though in some "chapters" we only hear a single line about Olive and how she was understood by someone else in the community).

Olive is wonderful. She is complex and real. She is both consistent and changes/ grows. The community around her (as well as her family) lend depth to the whole. Each short story delves into some interesting dynamic or relationship as well.

I just didn't like this book. submitted by 21621031390949 on July 20, 2018, 2:15pm Clearly in the minority in my opinion, I found this book overly depressing and I just didn't like Olive.

Okay submitted by TLW1998 on July 28, 2019, 8:22pm I heard that this book was great, but I thought that it was just okay.

Unlikable & unbelievable characters. Boring. Seriously, a terrible book. submitted by legalmama on August 5, 2019, 10:22am This book is part of a larger trend I have noticed throughout fiction to make characters more "authentic" by making them utterly unlikable. While initially I bought Olive's unbelievable lack of self awareness/low emotional intelligence as fairly typical of some of the New Englanders I have known, this was strained over time, as the townspeople could not seem to fill in the gaps either. Olive is an unhappy person, desperate to spread her misery among everyone she comes in contact with. The shifting point of view that comes from each little story makes it confusing. Some of the characters have literally nothing to do with Olive or those around her; they just happen to live in the same town. A friend highly recommended this, so I kept slogging through it, waiting for it to get better -- and all it did was leave me depressed and irritated for two days. Don't waste your time. This book is terrible.

New England Dubliners submitted by rebecca.perreault on June 16, 2021, 3:26pm A slower read, as the vignettes opened abruptly and without context to the characters you were reading about in that specific story. I found it easiest to read through for not who the characters were, but how they associated to Olive, our main character. In some vignettes, Olive took a central role in advising and showing compassion, but in other stories she was just a passerby in the background that people shared opinions on. All together, it painted a beautiful story about Olive's humanity, not just her good attributes that she shared herself, but the bad attributes that people painted her with from afar. She is flawed, challenged, and self aware.
I'd place this in a similar class of books to A Man Called Ove. I think we all know an Olive in our lives, and whether we see her more tender or thorny, she is probably judged by some, loved by some, and lonely to walk her own truth alone.

I like this book submitted by ilenekroll on July 24, 2021, 7:40pm I really like how all the characters are woven together in this book.

I didn't want to like it, but I did submitted by suttonp on June 22, 2022, 4:38pm I thought this would be too serious and depressing for me, but I kept reading and reading compulsively. It was a spaghetti and meatballs meal with french bread on the side that you just keep eating and end up super full. Would definitely recommend

Quirky submitted by leah karr on August 19, 2022, 12:58pm It took me a minute to adjust to the cadence of Olive. I enjoyed the book and read the sequel as well. This was better, as it typically goes...

Good writing submitted by lizgiessner on July 10, 2023, 6:13pm I liked the setting, Maine, the writing style, and the themes: expectations of others, hardship, family, and neighbors.