Book Review: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

I wouldn’t consider Olive Kitteridge a light read. It’s not hard to understand but I took my time reading it, not because it was a chore to read, because it’s just the opposite, but because this is the kind of book that you need to digest a chapter at a time.

Olive Kitteridge is a 70-something woman who is as complicated as women come. She is mean at times, speaks her mind, and often misunderstood. But just like most misunderstood people, she is not the way she is without reason. This doesn’t excuse her sometimes annoying behavior but it just proves that there is so much more than what we see and know about the people around us.

The book, which won a Pulitzer Prize, is not all about Olive but weaves different stories of people. The stories have Olive in common. My favorite chapters are the first one, which tell the story of Olive’s husband’s friendship with his assistant in the pharmacy he works for, the story about the man who keeps forgetting to get his wife her donut, the story about the couple who call the other couples they know the name of the couple’s kids (the Lydias), the story about Olive’s son and his second wife, and of course, the last chapter.

Olive Kitteridge made me feel a variety of emotions. I went from sad to excited, reflective to giddy, loving to heartbroken. Not many books do that to you. And that is why I loved this novel by Elizabeth Strout so much.

Rating: 5/5

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