Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

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I had been meaning to read Olive Kitteridge for a long time. It is a novel comprised of inter-connected short stories that all concern, at least indirectly, Olive Kitteridge, a somewhat gruff, aging (by the end of the novel retired) middle school math teacher. The novel reminded me a bit of Sherwood Anderson's Winesberg, Ohio in that the town itself is perhaps as much of a character as it is a setting.

I think that what Strout does with the town and with Olive, the only character to appear in each story, is interesting, but I'm a little bit wary of the structure of the novel and the potential it has to be gimicky. I found myself wondering how, if at all, the novel was better served being told in short stories through a variety of limited-3rd person points of view. If Strout's aim was to make the novel about the town (rather than, say, about Olive) or about the process of aging, settling, redefining expectations in old age, then the stories could potentially reveal things that a more traditional narrative couldn't. On reading the novel once, however, I am not convinced that the town of Crosby IS central to the novel in any way other than as the setting.

Ultimately, the characters were subtle and felt real (especially Olive who I found realistically unlikeable) but to me the tone was also a bit sanctimonious. Whether this was deliberate in the author's attempt to make every aspect of the text (including language, perhaps) sharpen our understanding of Olive was not clear to me. I would not put this on the top of a list for all of you, though I absolutely found the writing itself to be clean, thoughtful, even beautiful at times.