Thank you to EDIWTB reader Nancy West for this guest review of Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout. I’ve not read this book yet, but I want to.
Several years ago, my book group discussed Ian McEwan’s novel Enduring Love. At one point, someone brought up the title: presumably it was an adjectival construction referring to love that endures, but was it possibly a word play meant also to draw upon the present participle – as in “How do we go about enduring love?”
Probably not, we decided; it seemed unlikely that the author of such a complex character-driven novel intended to distract readers (or book groups) with a clever word play, and we moved on quickly to a discussion of the novel itself. It is a long literary leap from the unforgettable page-turner by the highly acclaimed British novelist to Strout’s collection of interconnected stories about hard-on-their-luck folks in a midsized, rundown town in coastal Maine, but I found myself thinking back often to that earlier discussion. Strout’s book could indeed be called Enduring Love, drawing upon both meanings – because although the stories are ostensibly linked by the fact that they either center around Olive Kittredge herself or people with some connection, however specious, to the title character, the theme that truly connects the stories is how any of them, or presumably how any of us, endure love, as it grows old and complicated and tedious and distractible and… and on and on. Husbands endure obnoxious wives; wives endure cheating husbands. A young woman attempts to endure in a promising relationship despite the inescapable memories of her childhood; another young woman’s endurance is tested by her own self-destructiveness. An adolescent wonders if she can endure the peculiarities of her parents, peculiarities that drive her beloved older sister out of the house. Olive and Henry Kittredge endure the emotional fallout of being random victims of a horrendous crime; another couple their age has less success with endurance after crime rips their domestic life apart – because in their case, their child is the perpetrator. In one of the most interesting plot threads, Olive’s enduring love for her son is tested and tested again, with uncertain results.
Some survive; some do not. Perhaps the most compelling example of endurance, though, is the reader’s enduring affection for Olive. Though many others in this Maine harbor town find her to be odious, omniscient viewpoint enables us to understand her as they cannot, and to appreciate her as few can. Ultimately, we find ourselves rooting for nearly every character in this collection, hoping against fairly high odds that they can all survive, and endure, and that the love around which their lives are centered can somehow endure along with them.
Thanks again for the post, Nancy!