Comments on: Book Review: Olive Kitteridge

By: JoDee

JoDee — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 19:18:25 +0000

Just finished reading this novel and found it very depressing. I wanted to stop after each chapter, but continued ,hoping to find something about Olive that I liked. I’m 65, have an only son, and have taught school for 43 years……..this book is not the ticket!

By: Marymac

Marymac — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 05:10:00 +0000

This book is a treasure! I too marked passages throughout the book that I will return to for the pleasure of the thought and the writing of it. This is a book that at a younger age (62 now) I would probably have struggled to finish. Which of these characters haven’t I passed in my years of living? And the author nails each situation as if she had lived every moment of it.

By: really?

really? — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 19:46:31 +0000

are you all serious? maybe you aren’t familiar with good literature then, because this book is beautifully written with a compelling plot. even if it isn’t “the book” for you, at least acknowledge that is it extremely well done.

By: Judith

Judith — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 14:35:26 +0000

Phew! I have been reading this book as it is this month’s choice in my book club. I have read the first few stories but have been struggling to make myself read any more. In fact it has felt a bit like having home work and so I have been doing displacement activities like making cookies! We have lots of chocolate chip cookies at the moment! I felt that I should like it and, indeed, the prose is beautifully written but like other readers I find Olive an unpleasant character, and ‘No’ to answer another blogger’s comment, you don’t have to like the characters you read about but neither is she described well enough for me to understand or identify with her.

By: Noeleen

Noeleen — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:32:37 +0000

I have to give this book a “No” also. I am almost 62 and did not like Olive. Her lack of understanding, petty meaness emotional distance left me cold. If I were her son I would have gone as far away as I could and look for a woman totally different from the one that raised me. Too bad he didn’t meet someone kinder. I don’t think he had a chance with his upbringing. The minor characters that entered the story was a mixed bag of vignettes, I kept hoping that one of them would help instill a change in Olive, that she would realize her short comings. I would not recomend this book to anyone and still wonder why it won the Pulitzer Prize?

By: Kathryn

Kathryn — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 21:04:54 +0000

I just finished reading Olive Kitteridge today and I would also give it a “NO” — I didn’t like Olive, but she doesn’t have to be likable to be significant. Irrelevant, because I found she was neither. Further, I didn’t like anyone in the novel: they seem lonely, weak, sad, broken… was there honestly one story that was optimistic? And often they were filled with icky “drama” like the sister who admits to sleeping with her sister’s husband after he has died, or the old couple that seem happy until the wife realizes that the 72 year old husband secretly visited a woman (4 years prior) that he once had an affair with. Even the ending chapter, where Olive “finds happiness” she also likens herself and the man she wouldn’t have chosen earlier in life to pieces of swiss cheese full of holes (i.e. life is lonely and painful and you take what good you can get… or you don’t).

When I finished the book, my first thought was that just because Strout was a skillful writer does not mean that she isn’t capable of writing absolute crap.

By: Susan Synnott

Susan Synnott — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 09:12:59 +0000

I haven’t enjoyed a novel as much as ‘Olive Kitteridge’ for years. The contradictions and complexities of the characters was one of its great strengths. I felt that the thing that defined Olive was her father’s suicide – it had her looking over her shoulder, managing a lot of that depression within herself, and keeping her eye on whether her son had inherited that gene. The second chapter in this book, where Kevin comes back to the town, and Olive sits in his car as Kevin’s rifle lies on the back. In a sense Kevin explains Olive’s character when he thinks of John Berryman’s poetry: “Save us from shotguns and fathers’ suicides…Mercy!..do not pull the trigger or all my life I’ll suffer you’re anger.”

By: elise

elise — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 20:34:09 +0000

I agree with people who wrote these posts. Before Olive Kitterage, I read “The Last Days of Dogtown”. Maybe that book was too good so Olive Kitterage was then by contrast even worse. Anyway I am absolutely mystified that it won the Pulitzer. While I got lost in the author’s talented writing style and rich descriptions, there was no point, other than maybe the author’s own worry about growing old? There is more to life than loneliness no matter how bad it gets, and the fact that this was such an intense theme showed the own author’s point of view a little too much. I am a geriatric social worker and the way she portrayed older people was actually a little demeaning. There is not just loneliness in old age. I tried, but did not see a point to these loosely connected lives. Everyone: read “Last Days of Dogtown” instead.

By: TucsonLady

TucsonLady — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 15:13:39 +0000

I agree with your review–it is a novel which is a string of short stories. Since I was reading this book for my Book Club, I was required to complete this novel. Pulitzer Prize, p-l-e-a-s-e!!! Olive is a frustrated, angry, mean-spirited woman who has no redeeming qualities, but beyond that, she is tiresome and uninteresting. Get over it!