Thursday, January 09, 2020

The Return of Olive



Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout

In a follow-up to “Olive Kitteridge,” a Pulitzer Prize winner, the overbearing, judgmental math teacher is a widow. For years she was married to Henry, a well-liked and patient man, a pharmacist in the small town of Crosby, Maine. They had one son, Christopher, who clashed with his mother. Henry had a stroke and died years later.
In “Olive, Again,” the reader is surprised that Olive has remarried. Who would want to spend time with Olive on purpose? Jack is a retired Harvard professor who left under a cloud. Olive tries to get along with her son and his family, she delivers a baby in a parked car, and deals with Jack’s problems and her own.
Olive  is infuriating but is dealing with universal problems of health, death, family problems, and friends and neighbors. While may have irritated much of the town, she is not to be forgotten.

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