Olive, Again

This was my favorite read of the year for 2019!  Really admire Elizabeth Strout’s work. She writes masterful sentences and creates indelible characters who are not always likeable, but fully human...and surely entertaining!

A prickly Maine woman finds hard-won wisdom as she butts up against the challenges of aging and ordinary life--and others struggling to survive.

In the Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout (My Name Is Lucy Barton) traced the life of a rigidly stoic, set-in-her-ways, lifelong inhabitant of fictional Crosby, Maine. Olive--a former high school math teacher and the wife of a small-town pharmacist--is judgmental, with often-grating hard edges that forge her opinions and resilience.

In Olive, Again, Strout picks up Olive's story in her seventh and eighth decades. Olive, an aging widow, contends with a now elusive world and her feelings for widower Jack Kennison, the antithesis of Olive. Jack, a staunch Republican and former professor at Harvard, migrated to Crosby after a co-worker accused him of sexual harassment and he was fired. He is drawn to Olive, questioningly.

As the narrative unfolds, readers learn that Olive and Jack have married. Despite their vastly different pedigrees, they are moored in similar emotional harbors, which unites them. Olive and Jack had first marriages to good people, yet both carry--and grapple with--guilt. Loneliness plagues them. They take stock of their fates, choices and destinies in a changing world, while facing the often-humiliating infirmities of aging. Jack tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter, a lesbian whom he never accepted. Similarly, Olive contends with her strained relationship with her son, who's married and raising a blended family in New York City.

The 13 episodic stories that constitute Olive, Again are deep and meaningful--made richly entertaining and accessible through Strout's skillful blend of the serious with the comedic.

Olive, Again: A Novel by Elizabeth Strout

Random House, $27.00 Hardcover, 9780812996548, 304 pages

Publication Date: October 15, 2019

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (October 25, 2019), link HERE

Favorite Reads of 2013

As a book reviewer for Shelf Awareness, I read and review at least three titles per month. Those titles are culled from an often eclectic list of nonfiction and fiction (mysteries and romances) - books I might not normally choose for myself, per se, but titles I have enjoyed reading that broaden my range. This blog tends to highlight a majority of those titles. However, I read a lot more than what I post on this blog.

Below is a list of my favorite reads from 2013. Please note: there is no special ranking. Each book is vastly different in content, form, tone and subject matter, and I feel it is unfair to qualify them in that manner. The numbers are simply there to keep the list orderly. 

To learn more about any of the selections, click on the highlighted titles for additional information:

Fiction:

1)      The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout

2)      The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

3)      The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

4)      Someone Else's Love Story by Joshilyn Jackson

5)      The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

6)      Tapestry of Fortunes by Elizabeth Berg

7)      Three Graves Full by Jamie Mason

8)      Mad About the Boy by Helen Fielding

9)      The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg

10)    The Widow Waltz by Sally Koslow

Nonfiction:

11)    This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett

12)    Saltscapes: The Kite Aerial Photography of Cris Benton by Cris Benton

13)    Killing Jesus: A History by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard

14)    Things that Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics 

          by Charles Krauthammer

15)    The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams by Ben Bradlee      

Author Event: Elizabeth Strout

The Gene Barnett Literary Society of Fairleigh Dickinson University (NJ) featured Pulitzer Prize-winner Elizabeth Strout on April 25, where she spoke about The Burgess Boys.

Strout's morally complex novel focuses on an American community in turmoil, in particular one Maine family, three adult siblings, embroiled in tensions that escalate cultural and familial divides.

During the lively, engaging talk entitled, "Concept to Completion," Strout discussed in depth the seven-year process of crafting her latest novel and the importance of fiction.

Strout had been thinking about The Burgess Boys since writing Abide with Me (published in 2006). The childhood incident surrounding the Burgess children was actually mentioned in an early draft of that novel, but never made it into the finished product.

Strout deems herself a "slow writer," often riddled with "panic and anxiety" about her work.  She does not write her books linearly from beginning to end. Rather her curiosity is "innocent and earnest . . . I do not want to present anything straightforward.  Life is a mess," she said.  "If you want to become an accurate writer (of old fashioned realism) you need to acknowledge that mess."

Character or "an abiding image" is what propels Strout into her work. Themes and storylines gradually evolve through writing, and she "follows her characters" often allowing them to "behave badly." 

"I am not there to judge," said Strout.

She discussed how the prologue of The Burgess Boys emerged five years into the writing of the novel and how she took great pains and had to make "huge decisions" over individual sentences to make those few short pages "truthful in tone and content."  They offer the reader an intimate introduction to the world of the book and provide a map outlining the journey taken over the course of the story.

"I am constantly battling between what I feel the reader needs and what I feel is truthful," she said. "Fiction is truer than most of the nonfiction we read because in fiction one can stay closer to the facts."

Cultural differences play a big part in the fabric of The Burgess Boys - whether a diversity of cultural lifestyles of those in the same family and/or cultural differences between Americans and Somali (Muslim) refugees.  Strout did extensive research into the Somali way of life and also did field work in prison systems in Maine and New York City in order to bring authenticity to the narrative. At times, learning about these cultural disparities became a rude awakening.

Strout believes that, "Novels are there as a social tool to bring the news and make readers understand that people are more alike than they are different. And while those differences can be significant, the only way we can really touch each other's shoulders is through fiction. We only have each other."

When asked during the Q&A about specific books on craft that have influenced her writing, Strout cited War and Peace and The Journals of John Cheever.  "These books are not specifically about craft, but they've greatly instructed me in my work."

Note:  A condensed version of this same article was featured in Shelf Awareness (4/30/13) "Image of the Day: Fiction is Truer than Most Nonfiction." Link HERE to read.

Photographs by Kathleen Gerard.  Please reprint with permission.

A Good Talk

Daniel Menaker believes that "Curiosity is the basis of good conversation." And he should know. After all, he's an expert now that he has written a book called A GOOD TALK: THE STORY AND SKILL OF CONVERSATION. Menaker is a former editor from The New Yorker Magazine and Random House, where he edited Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Elizabeth Strout, among others. Menaker is also an accomplished author himself, who has written a novel (The Treatment) and two wonderful collections of  short stories (Friends and Relations and The Old Left). In addition, he was the host of Title Page TV, an on-line program featuring in-depth discussions of books and authors, which was pulled after it ran out of funding. Drats!

The act of conversation is minimalized every day thanks to technologies like email, text messaging and Twitter.  But Menaker's book offers an exploration of conversation as an art form. It is a smart, witty and very insightful account of the history of conversation, and Menaker also offers advice and strategies for how to talk to people you don't know very well. Topics include how to deal with bores, interruptions, name-dropping, repetition, ordering in restaurants and topics of discussion to avoid. Menaker even offers transcripts of actual conversations he has had and then distills them to discover hidden meanings, agendas, and glaring faux pas. As an inquisitive person and a writer who is fascinated by dialogue and how people communicate with each other (things said vs. things not said), it was a fascinating and entertaining read. Be sure to tune in to the video on Mr. Menaker's website, where he undertakes to promote the book via a very clever interview - with himself!

Pulitzer Prize Winner on The Writing Life

"The job of writers is to arrange their lives in a way that continues to keep them writing." Elizabeth Strout, as stated on Writers on Writing, KCRW

Wonderful Washington Post feature on the author of Olive Kitteridge, a novel-in-stories, which won the Pulitzer Prize (2009). If you aren't familiar with the work of Elizabeth Strout (read also the novels Amy & Isabel, Abide with Me), you're truly missing out.