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“He [her doctor] sat down on the bed and took her hand. He said she was doing very well, that she could go home in a few days.

‘I’m an eighty-three-year-old woman,�� she said, looking at him. His eyes behind his thick glasses looked back at her.

And he shrugged and said, ‘In my world, that’s a baby.����

Olive, again and again and again in Crosby, Maine. I never tire of the stories about her or in which she makes only a brief appearance. There are thirteen stories in this second half of Olive’s life, and they are as unique and interesting as those in the original Olive Kitteridge, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2009.

Although she becomes a widow and marries again, she is still known to everyone as Mrs. Kitteridge. A teacher for many years, she runs across past students of all ages and varying careers. She is as stubborn as ever, awkward in the social niceties, and equally annoyed and embarrassed when she realises she’s crossed some so-called line.

Like a comedian who makes a joke “too soon�� after a tragedy, she is sometimes unwittingly insensitive. On the other hand, she is sometimes the only one who understands why someone is hurting and is the first to help with what’s needed.

She has her own vocabulary. “G�ǻ�ڰ����!�� she will exclaim. “Hell’s bells!�� She will refer to someone with dementia as having gone “d�DZ���-��DZ����. When frustrated, annoyed or embarrassed, she will declare that something is “Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.�� Or maybe “goddamn stupid!��

She is still impatient and intolerant of laziness, but she’s slowing down with age. She explain one of the truths of old age to a younger woman.

“When you get old, . . . you become invisible. It’s just the truth. And yet it’s freeing in a way.
. . .
It’s just that you don’t count anymore, and there’s something freeing about that.��

But, really, she does want to count. The younger woman was a local nobody as a little girl who grew up to become the Poet Laureate of the United States. Olive happened to spot her having breakfast at a nearby table and they sat together. Later, Olive tried to find people to tell, to brag to, actually, which is something she would never admit to. Her son had never heard of her. Not surprising. Do you know if your country has one and who it is? But I digress.

She seems cold and uncaring, but she has a surprising depth and insight into the suffering of others. She is the one who spots a cancer patient struggling with her groceries, helps her and starts to visit her regularly when all of the woman’s friends seem to have drifted away. She makes terrible cracks about nursing homes but visited her first husband regularly and visits another woman in one.

She doesn’t seem to do well with good-byes, so when she leaves someone, she often flutters her fingers in the air over her head as she walks out the door or to her car. It’s a kind of dismissive gesture, facing away and waving, as if to say that’s the end of the conversation and I’ll see my way out. I am adding this photo to show what I mean, although it’s not greatly representative of Olive, who might have her hand turned backwards, saying good-bye.

Woman waving good-bye to someone behind her as she is leaving

Later she meets Jack Kennison again, whom we met in the first book. He sees Olive for what she is �� a good, awkward, unusual, infuriating, intelligent woman who never bores him. He insists they belong together. But she hasn’t told her son, Christopher, who lives in New York with his wife and little kids, whom she hasn’t seen in three years. Her visit to them was a disaster.

The story “Motherless Child��, when they come north to visit her, is a squirmingly uncomfortable read. You want to take them each aside and prepare them for the visit, especially Olive, who is at a complete loss. She has nothing appropriate for any of them. When she overhears them refer to her as a “narcissist�� she is stunned and blames it on the therapist they see in NY where they live.

“Personality disorder? Given the extensive and widespread array of human emotions, why was anything a personality disorder? And who came up with such a term? People like that crackpot therapist Ann and Christopher had been seeing years ago in New York. Well, that therapist had a disorder; he was crazy.��

So that’s that. But when Ann blows up and berates Christopher in front of Olive and the kids, and Christopher sits quietly, accepting it, she is horrified. And with more reason than most. She knows that Ann’s mother died not long ago, making her a ‘motherless child�� so she cuts her some slack for that, but. . .

“What she would not tell Jack was the alarm she had felt when she saw Ann yell at her son, and what came to her as she sat here now was the fact that it had not been the first time Ann had yelled at him like that; these were the openings into the darkness of a relationship one saw by mistake, as if inside a dark barn, the door had been momentarily blown off and one saw things not meant to be seen ��

But it was more than that.

She had done what Ann had done. She had yelled at Henry in front of people. She could not remember who, exactly, but she had always been fierce when she felt like it. So there was this: Her son had married his mother, as all men �� in some form or other �� eventually do.��

Jack takes her for a drive after they leave, to give her a break. She thinks about the house they’re leaving, hers and Henry’s.

“The house where she had raised her son �� never, ever realizing that she herself had been raising a motherless child, now a long, long way from home.��

I really haven’t spoiled it by sharing that bit �� there is SO much more in Elizabeth Strout’s works. They are to be read and re-read. I recently re-read Olive Kitteridge and was surprised both how much was familiar and how much I enjoyed reading it again. Olive never gets ‘old��.

One of my favourite GR reviewers is Will Byrnes, who includes a lot of extra author and background material. Here's his review: /review/show...

And here's an interview I really enjoyed with the author.