Olive Kitteridge

“She didn't like to be alone. Even more, she didn't like being with people.” Olive Kitteridge

Elizabeth Strout’s “novel in stories”, Olive Kitteridge, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is a string of 13 tales anchored around the life of a seventh-grade math teacher from a small town on the coast of Maine. The book weaves in and out of some dark regrets, a couple of unripe romances and a few outright irrelevant (at first) bits of Olive’s life. However almost all the stories leave an aftertaste of betrayal and untold insecurities.

Strout has patiently painted a portrait of a woman who is considered the root of disappointment for many people in her life. As stories unfold though, Olive, at times an unbearable mother and an ungrateful wife, occasionally manages to come across as a genuinely compassionate character.

By the fifth chapter, I thought I had figured out Olive and that I had already started to hate this impatient protagonist. But Strout reminds us, “Traits don’t change, states of mind do.” As Kitteridge unapologetically meddles in others affairs, a brand new perspective comes to light. Her empathy is genuine. Her significance in others lives becomes quite apparent by the time you keep this book down. Welcome back, you toasty feeling! Let me bookmark you so I don’t lose you again.

I’d recommend everyone to give this simplistically beautiful book a whirl till you find your own version of “substance in the ordinary”. As always, this book is best served with a cup of zero judgment.