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A review by savaging
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
5.0
Several months ago, Missy read me this paragraph from Olive Kitteridge:
"And yet, standing behind her son, waiting for the traffic light to change, she remembered how in the midst of it all there had been times when she’d felt a loneliness so deep that once, not many years ago, having a cavity filled, the dentist’s gentle turning of her chin with his soft fingers had felt to her like a tender kindness of almost excruciating depth, and she had swallowed with a groan of longing, tears springing to her eyes. (“Are you all right, Mrs. Kitteridge?” the dentist had said.)"
It went on my reading list. No, I don't like books that use phrases like "tender kindness of almost excruciating depth," but all the same I was once on a red-eye flight back home when an annoying little brat in the seat next to me fell asleep against my shoulder, and the warmth of human contact here of all places, hurtling above the earth, was suddenly, unbearably blissful.
These are stories about love, at its most mundane and disappointing and over-hyped. Those tired old relationships between the long-married, and between parents and grown children, all of them brimming with lies and resentment. Olive Kitteridge is a mean old crank who shows up in each story, at times only tangentially. Her depressed cynicism works wonders to save nuclear-family stories from sentimentality. And here's the thing: when I fall in love with Olive Kitteridge, despite (or because of?) all of her cruelties and pettiness, then I'm suddenly left with only that, with the surprising resilience and pervasiveness of love. Love! -- Olive and I both are embarrassed to use the word. But this was one of the most truly hopeful books about human relationships I've ever read.
"And yet, standing behind her son, waiting for the traffic light to change, she remembered how in the midst of it all there had been times when she’d felt a loneliness so deep that once, not many years ago, having a cavity filled, the dentist’s gentle turning of her chin with his soft fingers had felt to her like a tender kindness of almost excruciating depth, and she had swallowed with a groan of longing, tears springing to her eyes. (“Are you all right, Mrs. Kitteridge?” the dentist had said.)"
It went on my reading list. No, I don't like books that use phrases like "tender kindness of almost excruciating depth," but all the same I was once on a red-eye flight back home when an annoying little brat in the seat next to me fell asleep against my shoulder, and the warmth of human contact here of all places, hurtling above the earth, was suddenly, unbearably blissful.
These are stories about love, at its most mundane and disappointing and over-hyped. Those tired old relationships between the long-married, and between parents and grown children, all of them brimming with lies and resentment. Olive Kitteridge is a mean old crank who shows up in each story, at times only tangentially. Her depressed cynicism works wonders to save nuclear-family stories from sentimentality. And here's the thing: when I fall in love with Olive Kitteridge, despite (or because of?) all of her cruelties and pettiness, then I'm suddenly left with only that, with the surprising resilience and pervasiveness of love. Love! -- Olive and I both are embarrassed to use the word. But this was one of the most truly hopeful books about human relationships I've ever read.