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Olive Kitteridge
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Olive Kitteridge (2008) (edit title/settings)

A Novel in Stories

by Elizabeth Strout (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge... read more

Summary edit see section history

The presence of Olive Kitteridge, a seventh-grade math teacher and the wife of a pharmacist, links these 13 stories. A big woman, she’s like a planetary body, exerting a strong gravitational pull. Several stories put Olive at the center, but in a few she makes only a fleeting appearance. It’s... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

The presence of Olive Kitteridge, a seventh-grade math teacher and the wife of a pharmacist, links these 13 stories. A big woman, she’s like a planetary body, exerting a strong gravitational pull. Several stories put Olive at the center, but in a few she makes only a fleeting appearance. It’s no coincidence that the two weakest stories are the ones in which she is merely mentioned. Without her, the book goes adrift, as if it has lost its anchor.

She isn’t a nice person. As one of the town’s older women notes, “Olive had a way about her that was absolutely without apology.” Olive’s son puts it more bluntly. “You can make people feel terrible,” he tells her. She dismisses others with words like “hellion” and “moron” and “flub-dub.” After swapping discontents, she says to a friend, “Always nice to hear other people’s problems.”

But as the stories continue, a more complicated portrait of the woman emerges. Olive may hurl invectives at her son, but she also loves him, almost more than she can bear. Her husband is a kind man and she loves him too, although she has trouble expressing it. She’s prone to “stormy moods,” as well as “sudden, deep laughter,” and she harbors a sense of compassion, even for strangers.

Source: NY Times

Characters edit see section history

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “What young people didn’t know . . . they did not know that lumpy, aged and wrinkled bodies were as needy as their own young, firm ones, that love was not to be tossed away carelessly, as if it were a tart on a platter with others that got passed around again. No, if love was available, one chose it, or didn’t, choose it. And if her platter had been full with goodness of Henry and she had found it burdensome, had flicked it off crumbs at a time, it was because she had not known what one should know; that day after day was unconsciously squandered.”
  • “Don’t be scared of your hunger. If you’re scared of your hunger, you’ll just be one more ninny like everyone else.”
    Julie (quoting Olive)
  • “In the doctor's waiting room she sat, reading a magazine. After an hour, the nurse came out and said, 'Mr. Kennison's worried about you waiting so long.' 'Well, tell him to stop it. I'm perfectly comfortable.' And she was. In fact, it had been a long time since she'd been this comfortable. She wouldn't have minded if it took all day. It was a news magazine she was reading, something she hadn't done for quite a while-she turned one page quickly, because she couldn't stand to look at the president's face. His close-set eyes, the jut of his chin, the sight offended her viscerally.”
  • “A block of winter sun was splayed across the glass of the cosmetics shelf; a strip of wooden floor shone like honey.”
  • “The dresses there make her feel violent, though. She wants to snatch them down, twist the expensive dark fabric of these small dresses hanging pompously on wooden hangers. . .The beige sweater is thick, and this is good, because it means the girl won't wear it until fall. Olive unfolds it quickly and smears a black line of Magic Marker down one arm. Then she holds the marker in her mouth and she folds the sweater hurriedly, folding it again, and even again, to get it as neat as it was at first. You would never, opening this closet door, know that someone had pawed through it.”
  • “Each of his sons had been his favorite.”
  • “Olive pictured two slices of swiss cheese pressed together, such holes they brought to this union - what pieces life took out of you.”
  • “"As she stepped out of the school that night, into the wintry air, walking with the talking Henry to the car in the front parking lot, she had the sensation that she had been seen. And she had not even known she felt invisible."”
    Olive Kittredge
  • “Sometimes, like now, Olive had a sense of just how desperately hard every person in the world was working to get what they needed.”
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it.
    Highlighted by 844 Kindle customers
  • They did not know that lumpy, aged, and wrinkled bodies were as needy as their own young, firm ones, that love was not to be tossed away carelessly, as if it were a tart on a platter with others that got passed around again. No, if love was available, one chose it, or didn’t choose it. And if her platter had been full with the goodness of Henry and she had found it burdensome, had flicked it off crumbs at a time, it was because she had not known what one should know: that day after day was unconsciously squandered.
    Highlighted by 686 Kindle customers
  • It was as if marriage had been a long, complicated meal, and now there was this lovely dessert.
    Highlighted by 683 Kindle customers
  • Sometimes, like now, Olive had a sense of just how desperately hard every person in the world was working to get what they needed. For most, it was a sense of safety, in the sea of terror that life increasingly became. People thought love would do it, and maybe it did.
    Highlighted by 627 Kindle customers
  • Olive’s private view is that life depends on what she thinks of as “big bursts” and “little bursts.” Big bursts are things like marriage or children, intimacies that keep you afloat, but these big bursts hold dangerous, unseen currents. Which is why you need the little bursts as well: a friendly clerk at Bradlee’s, let’s say, or the waitress at Dunkin’ Donuts who knows how you like your coffee. Tricky business, really.
    Highlighted by 518 Kindle customers
  • But here they were, and Olive pictured two slices of Swiss cheese pressed together, such holes they brought to this union—what pieces life took out of you.
    Highlighted by 503 Kindle customers
  • ‘Don’t be scared of your hunger. If you’re scared of your hunger, you’ll just be one more ninny like everyone else.’ ”
    Highlighted by 400 Kindle customers
  • 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.
    Highlighted by 377 Kindle customers
  • Who, who, does not have their basket of trips? It isn’t right. Molly Collins said that today, standing out by the church. It isn’t right. Well. It isn’t.
    Highlighted by 235 Kindle customers
  • schadenfreude, and it didn’t work.” She sang, “Saaaaw-ry.”
    Highlighted by 175 Kindle customers
Show all 19 quotes from this book

First Sentence edit see section history

For many years Henry Kitteridge was a pharmacist in the next town over, driving every morning on snowy roads, or rainy roads, or summertime roads, when the wild raspberries shot their new growth in brambles along the last section of town before he turned off to where the wider road led to the pharmacy.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Pharmacy
Incoming Tide
The Piano Player
A Little Burst
Starving
A Different Road
Winter Concert
Tulips
Basket of Trips
Ship in a Bottle
Security
Criminal
River
A Reader's Guide

Glossary edit see section history

  • schadenfreude: pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others
  • quotidian: found in the ordinary course of events

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 2009 of 85 in Pulitzer Prize Winners - Fiction. (authoritative list)
This book is in KCPL Discussion Kit (Aug2010). (community list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Elizabeth Strout (Author)

Other Contributors:

  1. Silvia Castoldi (Translator)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Random House Inc
Country: USA
Publication Date: 2008
ISBN: 140006208X
Page Count: 288

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

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  • What's For Dinner?
  • Without a Backward Glance
  • Precarious: Stories of Love, Sex, and Misunderstanding
  • Great House
  • The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

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