Olive, Again     Elizabeth Strout     (2019)

Olive is back, and you won’t want to miss her return.

Elizabeth Strout, the queen of linked short stories, has produced a sequel that matches or exceeds her Pulitzer-winning Olive Kitteridge of 2008. In thirteen succinct stories, each of which can absolutely stand alone, Strout unpeels life in the fictional rural town of Crosby, Maine. The crusty, candid Olive—a character in most of the stories—is sometimes intolerant and cranky but often kind. When her kindness is awkwardly expressed and causes offense, she’s surprised, and she tries to rectify her behavior. She’s mellowed as she’s aged.

The other characters in Olive, Again are townspeople whom Olive interacts with in some way. Their lives are intertwined with each other and with the inevitable sadnesses and transgressions and occasional triumphs of living on this Earth. There’s unfaithfulness, pedophilia, disease, and death (especially by suicide) aplenty. The surroundings of the town can reflect the despair of the inhabitants:

• “Around them a sudden gust of wind sent a few twigs swirling, and muddy plastic bag that had been run over a number of times rose slightly, then dropped back to the ground among slushy car tracks from the old snow.”(120)

• “As Denny approached the river, and could see in the moonlight how the river was moving quickly, he felt as though his life had been a piece of bark on that river, just going along, not thinking at all. Headed toward the waterfall.” (142)

Yet it’s not all bleakness. Strout's characters can also connect with the natural world in a way that lifts their spirits, if only briefly:

• “The field was darkening, the trees behind it were like pieces of black canvas, but the sky still sent down the sun, which sliced gently across the grass on the far end of the field.” (17)

The stories, which take place the very recent past, span more than a decade of Olive’s retirement from her school-teaching job. Early in the book, when she’s still mourning the loss of her husband, she marries for a second time. I was shocked by this plot development, not the least because Olive did not seem to me like someone who’d be considered a prize mate. I could hear Strout gently chiding me for my belittling thought. Though Olive doesn’t possess physical beauty and can be irksome in her bluntness, she is unfailingly honest. Honesty is a rare trait, and her second husband recognizes this.

Please read this book. It will open your eyes to components of the human condition that you’ve never thought about before. 

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I’ve reviewed two other excellent Strout linked-story novels: My Name is Lucy Barton (2016) and its sequel, Anything is Possible (2017), set in New York City and rural Illinois respectively.