OLIVE KITTERIDGE by Elizabeth Strout

From a character development point of view, it’s an interesting novel consisting of several short stories that all come together in the end to form a narrative about Olive Kitteridge and her life.

Olive, a retired school teacher, is portrayed mainly in situations where she’s lacking compassion, kindness or humour - “Olive had a way about her that was absolutely without apology.”

At first glance, most of the stories revealed her as a woman who is going through life emotionally detached from anyone, including her son and husband.

However, life threw a lot of tough experiences her way such as mental illness, adultery, alchoolism and loneliness. All these episodes play a significant role in her “hard exterior” and in fact, as any human being, she is far more complex than first appeard to be.

On the whole, by the end of the book, I was personally craving some of the better and more joyful side of life, which was pretty much entirely left out in this read.

“He wanted to put his arms around her, but she had a darkness that seemed to stand beside her like an acquaintance that would not go away.”

“You couldn't make yourself stop feeling a certain way, no matter what the other person did. You had to just wait. Eventually the feeling went away because others came along. Or sometimes it didn't go away but got squeezed into something tiny, and hung like a piece of tinsel in the back of your mind.”