Summary and Reviews of Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Olive Kitteridge

by Elizabeth Strout
  • Critics' Consensus (9):
  • Readers' Rating (9):
  • First Published:
  • Mar 25, 2008, 288 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Sep 2008, 304 pages
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About This Book

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.

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  • award image

    Pulitzer Prize
    2009

Reviews

Media Reviews

Entertainment Weekly
Rarely does a story collection pack such a gutsy emotional punch.

O: The Oprah Magazine
Perceptive, deeply empathetic . . . Olive is the axis around which these thirteen complex, relentlessly human narratives spin themselves into Elizabeth Strout’s unforgettable novel in stories.

San Francisco Chronicle
Funny, wicked and remorseful, Mrs. Kitteridge is a compelling life force, a red-blooded original. When she’s not onstage, we look forward to her return. The book is a page-turner because of her.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Olive Kitteridge still lingers in memory like a treasured photograph.

The New Yorker
Strout makes us experience not only the terrors of change but also the terrifying hope that change can bring: she plunges us into these churning waters and we come up gasping for air.

USA Today.
Fiction lovers, remember this name: Olive Kitteridge. . . . You’ll never forget her. . . . [Elizabeth Strout] constructs her stories with rich irony and moments of genuine surprise and intense emotion. . . . Glorious, powerful stuff.

Kirkus Reviews
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.

Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Like this story, the collection is easy to read and impossible to forget.

Library Journal
Readers will have to decide for themselves whether it's worth the ride to the last few pages to witness Olive's slide into something resembling insight.

Booklist
Starred Review. Though loneliness and loss haunt these pages, Strout also supplies gentle humor and a nourishing dose of hope.

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