Olive Again (Strout)

Olive Again 
Elizabeth Strout, 2019
Random House
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812996548


Summary
The New Yorker has said that Elizabeth Strout "animates the ordinary with an astonishing force."

She has never done so more clearly than in these pages, where the iconic Olive struggles to understand not only herself and her own life but the lives of those around her in the town of Crosby, Maine.

Whether with a teenager coming to terms with the loss of her father, a young woman about to give birth during a hilariously inopportune moment, a nurse who confesses a secret high school crush, or a lawyer who struggles with an inheritance she does not want to accept, the unforgettable Olive will continue to startle us and to move us.

In Strout’s words, Olive will inspire us "to bear the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can." (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—January 6, 1956
• Where—Portland, Maine, USA
• Education—B.A., Bates College; J.D. and Certificate of Gerontology, Syracuse University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York, and in Maine.

Elizabeth Strout is an American writer of fiction. She was born in Portland, Maine, and raised in small towns in Maine and New Hampshire. Her father was a science professor, and her mother taught high school.

After graduating from Bates College, Strout spent a year in Oxford, England, followed by studies at law school for another year. In 1982 she graduated with honors, and received both a law degree from the Syracuse University College of Law and a Certificate of Gerontology from the Syracuse School of Social Work. That year her first story was published in New Letters magazine.

Strout moved to New York City, and continued to write stories that were published in literary magazines, as well as in Redbook and Seventeen. It took her six or seven years to write Amy and Isabelle, which when published was shortlisted for the 2000 Orange Prize and nominated for the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. The novel was made into a television movie starring Elisabeth Shue and produced by Oprah Winfrey's studio, Harpo Films.

During the fall semsester of 2007, Strout was a NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) professor at Colgate University, where she taught creative writing at both the introductory and advanced level. She was also on the faculty of the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte in Charlotte, North Carolina.

In 2009 Strout was honored with a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Olive Kitteridge (2008), a collection of connected short stories about a woman and her immediate family and friends on the coast of Maine. In 2010, Italian booksellers voted Olive Kitteridge and Strout as the winner of the Premio Bancarella award in the medieval Piazza della Repubblica in Pontremoli, Italy. Her new book, The Burgess Boys, was published in 2013.

Strout is married to former Maine Attorney General James Tierney, who currently serves as the Director of the National State Attorney General Program at Columbia Law School. She divides her time between New York and Maine. (From Wikipedia.)

Extras
From a 2006 Barnes & Noble interview:

• My first job was when I was about 12, cleaning houses in the afternoons for different elderly women in town. I hated it. I would be so bored scrubbing at some kitchen tile, that my mind would finally float all over the place, to the beach, to a friend's house...all this happened in my mind as I scrubbed those tiles, so it was certainly good for my imagination. But I did hate it."

• Without a doubt my mother was an inspiration for my writing. This is true in many ways, but mostly because she is a wonderful storyteller, without even knowing it. I would listen, as a child, when some friend of hers came to visit, and they would gossip about the different people they knew. My mother had the most fascinating stories about people's families, murderers, mental illnesses, babies abandoned, and she delivered it all in a matter-of-fact way that was terribly compelling. It made me believe that there was nothing more interesting than the lives of people, their real hidden lives, and this of course can lead one down the path of becoming a fiction writer.

• Later, in college, one of my favorite things was to go into town and sit at the counter at Woolworth's (so tragic to have them gone!) and listen to people talking; the waitresses and the customers — I loved it. I still love to eavesdrop, but mostly I like the idea of being around people who are right in the middle of their lives, revealing certain details to each other — leaving the rest for me to make up.

• I love theater. I love sitting in an audience and having the actors right there, playing out what it means to be a human being. There is something about the actual relationship that is going on between the audience and the actors that I just love. I love seeing the sets and costumes, the decisions that have been made about the staging...it's a place for the eye and the ear to be fully involved. I have always loved theater."

• I also like cell phones. What I mean by that is I hear many people complain about cell phones; they can't go anywhere without hearing someone on a cell phone, etc. But I love that chance to hear half a conversation, even if the person is just saying, ‘Hi honey, I'll be home in ten minutes, do you want me to bring some milk?' And I'm also grateful to have a cell phone, just to know it's there if I need it when I'm out and about. So I'm a cell phone fan.

• I don't especially like to travel, not the way many people do. I know many people that love to go to far-off and different places, and I've never been like that. I seem to get homesick as quickly as a child. I may like being in some new place for a few days, but then I want to go home and return to my routine and my familiar corner stores. I am a real creature of habit, without a doubt.

• When asked what book most inluenced her life as a writer, she answered:

Perhaps the book that had the greatest influence on my career as a writer was The Journals of John Cheever. Of course many, many books had influenced me before I read that, but there was something about the honesty found in Cheever's journals that gave me courage as a writer. And his ability to turn a phrase, to describe in a breath the beauty of a rainstorm or the fog rising off the river... all this arrived in my life as a writer at a time when I seemed ready to absorb his examples of what a sentence can do when written with the integrity of emotion and felicity of language.

Book Reviews
In the first chapter of Elizabeth Strout’s Olive, Again… the man who will become Olive’s second husband writes, "Dear Olive Kitteridge, I have missed you and if you would see fit to call me or email me or see me, I would like that very much." Jack Kennison might be speaking for fans of Strout’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Olive Kitteridge, which inspired an Emmy-winning HBO mini-series and now this sequel. However, like its iconic heroine, this book is capable of standing alone.… [Olive] is as indelible as the ink on Jack Kennison’s paper. If you know Olive, you know how she would respond to the hoopla: with an eye roll and an "Oh Godfrey." It’s good to have her back.
Elisabeth Egan -  New York Times Book Review


Strout dwells with uncanny immediacy inside the minds and hearts of a dazzling range of ages: the young (with their confusion, wonder, awakening sexuality), the middle-aged (envy, striving, compromise), the old (failing bodies, societal shunning, late revelations).… I have long and deeply admired all of Strout’s work, but Olive, Again transcends and triumphs. The naked pain, dignity, wit and courage these stories consistently embody fill us with a steady, wrought comfort.
Washington Post


Olive is a brilliant creation not only because of her eternal cantankerousness but because she’s as brutally candid with herself about her shortcomings as she is with others. Her honesty makes people strangely willing to confide in her, and the raw power of Ms. Strout’s writing comes from these unvarnished exchanges, in which characters reveal themselves in all of their sadness and badness and confusion.… The great, terrible mess of living is spilled out across the pages of this moving book. Ms. Strout may not have any answers for it, but she isn’t afraid of it either.
Wall Street Journal


A magnificent achievement on its own terms…. We see Olive acquiring a view of herself, and coming to recognize as valuable the other people who grant that vision. In the process, she shares in the alchemy that she continues to perform for us and elicits our unexpected, abiding love.
Boston Globe


In thirteen poignant interconnected stories, Strout follows the cantankerous, truth-telling Mainer as she ages, experiencing a joyful second marriage and the evolution of her difficult relationship with her son. In her blunt yet compassionate way, Olive grapples with loneliness, infidelity, mortality and the question of whether we can ever really know someone—ourselves included.
People


The lovable, irascible Olive Kitteridge is back…. In this novel—set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing Maine, ravaged by opioid addiction and economic neglect—Strout wields great pathos out of life and all its attendant tragedies.
BuzzFeed


Strout aims the spotlight on her wry heroine and the characters of Crosby, Maine, in another book that’s sure to have you flipping pages long into the night.
Bustle


(Starred review) As direct, funny, sad, and human as its heroine,… [this is a] welcome follow-up to Olive Kitteridge.… Strout again demonstrates her gift for zeroing in on ordinary moments in the lives of ordinary people to highlight their extraordinary resilience.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) Olive may offer blunt honesty that defies societal norms, but her clarity is refreshing and never cruel.… Strout wrote that Olive… demanded [she] write these new stories. Of course Olive did that: it’s so…Olive. Thank goodness Olive prevailed. Exquisite.
Library Journal


Love, loss, regret, the complexities of marriage, the passing of time, and the astonishing beauty of the natural world are abiding themes, along with "the essential loneliness of people' and the choices they make 'to keep themselves from that gaping darkness." Unmissable.
Booklist


(Starred review) The thorny matriarch of Crosby, Maine, makes a welcome return.… Beautifully written and alive with compassion, at times almost unbearably poignant. A thrilling book in every way.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Olive Kitteridge is a fascinating character. Some readers might see her as abrasive and unlikeable; others might see her as honest and sympathetic. How do you characterize Olive? What do you appreciate about her? What irks you about her? Is she someone you’d like to meet in real life?

2. If you read Olive Kitteridge, do you feel Olive has changed in Olive, Again? If so, in what ways? If not, what about her has stayed the same?

3. During a fight with her son, Christopher, Olive realizes "that she had been frightened of her son for years." How does she come to this realization? How does it influence how Olive thinks of herself as a mother?

4. Watching Ann yell at Christopher, Olive realizes she had yelled at her late husband, Henry, in much the same way. What does she come to accept about herself as a person? How does she ask for forgiveness?

5. In today’s climate of increased awareness about sexual harassment, how did you feel reading "Cleaning," the chapter about Kayley and Mr. Ringrose? Would you qualify it as a type of harassment, or did you feel Kayley was empowered and exploring her sexuality? Does the fact that Mr. Ringrose left Kayley money complicate any of your feelings?

6. Consider this passage: "These were 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." Do you think all relationships have a secret darkness that outsiders don’t see, or do only troubled relationships have this?

7. Strout writes that there were a few nights during Jack’s marriage to Olive where "he had sat on the front porch and had—half drunk—wept, because he wanted to be with Betsy instead." How did you interpret this? Did it feel like a betrayal (even involuntarily) to you, or simply a fact of life?

8. Bernie and Suzanne have an interesting relationship. What are the different secrets and experiences that bond them together? How did they both help each other? Do you think it’s rare to see an emotionally—but not physically—intimate relationship like theirs in fiction? What about in real life?

9. Bernie tells Suzanne she doesn’t need to tell her husband about her affair. She clearly believes it’s a mistake and isn’t planning to repeat it. Do you agree with Bernie’s advice? Is it ever smarter to keep a secret like that, or do you believe one must always tell the truth?

10. Olive and Cindy, who might be terminally ill, have an interesting conversation about death. They both admit to being afraid of it, but Olive—in her special way—comforts Cindy by reminding her, "The truth is—we’re all just a few steps behind you. Twenty minutes behind you, and that’s the truth." Was this notion a comfort to you? What do you think would happen if people, even those who aren’t terminally ill, started speaking more openly about death?

11. When Olive is talking about her marriage to Jack with Cindy, she says, "Imagine at my age, starting over again." Then she adds, "But it’s never starting over, Cindy, it’s just continuing on." Why do you think she corrects herself in this way? What different connotations do those two phrases—starting over and continuing on—hold?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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