As initially presented, Olive Kitteridge is a pushy, overbearing, overweight woman in town who everyone loves to both pity and hate. She believes she is better than everyone else in town and is completely unforgiving of those who do not live up to her high standards. However, as the 13 stories in this book unfold, Olive is revealed as a complex and empathetic character. With this book, we are reminded of that old adage: don’t judge a book by its cover.
“Olive Kitteridge” is a “novel in stories” written by Elizabeth Strout. All the stories are set in Crosby, Maine and include Olive, even if only briefly. “Olive Kitteridge” was nominated for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award.
In several of the stories, Olive does not play a significant role in the outcome of the tale. She does, however, always come into play during key moments. In one story, she is simply quoted by a former student who is contemplating running away from home: “Don’t be scared of your hunger. If you’re scared of your hunger, you’ll just be one more ninny like everyone else.” In another, she comes upon a former student about to commit suicide (unbeknownst to Olive), engages him in conversation (which includes as a topic the suicide of her own father), and through the course of the conversation and a jarring event afterward, the boy reengages in life. We also encounter Olive in a stressful hostage situation with her husband in which they say things to each other than cannot be forgotten or forgiven; yet in a later story, Olive’s absolute love and devotion is displayed for her dying husband.
It is not until the eleventh story in the book, “Security,” that Olive’s inner character is really revealed. It is in this story that Olive reconnects with her son, after having driven him across the country with his first–in Olive’s opinion–unsuitable wife. At this point in the book, Olive’s son, Christopher, has moved to New York with his second wife. The second wife is pregnant with Christopher’s child, but already has two children, each with a different father. Christopher has called Olive to come visit for “a couple of weeks.” Olive interprets this as Christopher and his new wife needing some help. Begrudgingly, Olive agrees to visit for three days. It is on the plane ride that the reader first gets a sense of Olive as someone other than a brash and bitter woman:
“And then as the little plane climbed higher and Olive saw spread out below them fields of bright and tender green in the morning sun, farther out the coastline, the ocean shiny and almost flat, tiny white wakes behind a few lobster boats–then Olive felt something that she had not expected to feel again: a sudden surging greediness for life. She leaned forward, peering out the window: sweet pale clouds, the sky as blue as your hat, the new green of the fields, the broad expanse of water–seen from up here it all appeared wondrous, amazing. She remembered what hope was, and this was it. That inner churning that moves you forward, plows you through life the way the boats below plowed the shiny water, the way the plane was plowing forward to a place new, and where she was needed. She had been asked to be a part of her son’s life.”
This newly found hope is short-lived. The greeting from her son is terse, she steps in dog mess before entering his house, and Olive immediately feels uncomfortable in his home:
“It was as though she had never outgrown that feeling she must have had as a child–that hypersensitivity to the foreign smell of someone else’s home, the fear that coated the unfamiliar way a bathroom door closed, the creak in a staircase worn by footsteps not one’s own.”
The visit with her son does not end well, and although her own actions led to the fracture between mother and son once again, we feel that we know Olive so much better now and end up feeling sympathy for her.
In the end, we connect with Olive and identify with her in many ways. While she is not always an admirable character, her passion and forthrightness are enviable. We learn to love her, despite her many faults.
