Reviewed by Jill Caugherty
Elizabeth Strout does it again! This novel of connected stories, the sequel to the award-winning Olive Kitteridge, succeeds on many levels as Strout breathes life into completely credible, multi-faceted characters in the fictional town of Crosby, Maine.
Olive, the feisty, blunt matron of Crosby, becomes the novel's center of gravity, and we can't help but like her. As her future second husband, Jack, tries to explain: "God, Olive, you're a difficult woman...Please marry me, Olive. Because I love you.. Because you're Olive."
Opinionated, honest, sharp, and loath to curse (She uses antiquated phrases like "Godfrey," "Hell's Bells," and "Phooey to you"); Olive encounters and interacts with other residents of Crosby, many of whom either love her or hate her. Sure, she might talk about herself a lot, and she might not know when to keep her opinions to herself. But in almost every chapter, each its own stand-out story, Strout reveals Olive's kinder side.
While attending a "stupid, stupid" baby shower ("Labor") in which she has forgotten to bring a present, Olive realizes a guest is going into labor, and delivers the baby in her car. In "Cleaning," Olive notes a grieving girl's devotion to a neighbor at a nursing home, and volunteers to recommend the girl’s cleaning services to an elderly woman, despite the woman’s being “an old horror.” Later, she praises the girl’s dead father. In "Motherless Child," we see Olive struggling to come to terms with the fact that her relationship with her son is rocky, and she has been a less than stellar mother. In "Heart," she demands that a nurse assistant on the opposite side of the political spectrum show some decency, in Olive's house, to a woman from Kenya. In “Friend,” she checks on a fellow resident at their assisted living home, and grants her privacy when she realizes the woman is not “going dopey-dope” but is simply having a conversation with a mother she misses, “calling upon her in her own voice.”
A big, tall woman who gives her signature backward wave of her hand over her head as she bids goodbye, Olive zips out of a story, and we miss her. We're left with the fleeting realization that this is a person you can trust, who is genuine. She speaks her mind; she despises melodrama and emotion; she sees through phoniness; she’s a little self-centered; but she shows kindness in her own way.
Olive, Again is at its most powerful in illustrating its characters' transformations. Even as Olive ages and moves to an assisted living home, she continues to make small, poignant discoveries about herself and the people in her life. She remarks to a new friend, another resident at the nursing home, "I don't think my mother ever really liked me. I guess she loved me, but I don't know if she liked me." After a chance encounter with a famous Nobel Laureate poet from her town, Olive is stunned later to read a poem by the woman in which she, Olive, is portrayed as lonely - and she realizes the poet is right. In “Motherless Child,” she shivers as she sees that “she herself had been raising a motherless child,” who is “now a long, long way from home.” In “Friend,” Olive admires her two dead husbands and reflects on her luck in finding them, but decides it is “herself..that did not please her… But it was too late to be thinking that.”
Strout realistically portrays not just Olive, who is grappling with her flaws and at last gaining some level of self-awareness. Other chapters, even in which Olive doesn't appear, provide the reader with poignant glimpses into the lives of characters struggling to find meaning or attempting to reconcile painful truths. In “Exiles,” two brothers living in Crosby, Maine and New York City, respectively, long to be in the other city. In “The End of the Civil War Days,” an estranged couple who have lived in the same house for years, separately, at last come together as they realize what their estrangement has cost. In “Arrested,” a man is surprised to discover that his first wife, now dead, was exceedingly more complex than he ever knew. These little, clear truths – often sad and difficult - then bubble up into sharply crafted themes, and make for the quintessential short story.
While Olive Again is rich in its character portrayals and their self-discoveries, it sometimes omits important moments in Olive’s story by mentioning them only in passing. For instance, Olive’s courtship and marriage to Jack are missing, as are Jack’s death and Olive’s transfer to an assisted living home. These details are not hugely important, however, as we trace Olive’s passage through time; and their absence does not detract from her transformation.
Unlike the meandering, seemingly unfocused plots of writers like Alice Munro, Elizabeth Strout's stories are beautifully crafted, packaged and powerful. In Olive Again, Strout creates well-rounded characters, rotates them from all angles for her readers to inspect – warts, quirks and all -- and allows them to arrive at surprising new realizations about themselves and their lives. Kudos, Ms. Strout! Five stars!