One of America’s most adept chroniclers of everyday life, there are few novelists who get under a character's skin more thoroughly than Elizabeth Strout. In Olive Again she returns to her finest creation, spiky, obdurate and disarmingly human anti-heroine Olive Kitteridge for a fine chronicle of late love and generational division, set in the coastal Maine community that Strout has made her own.
Olive, Again follows the blunt, contradictory yet deeply loveable Olive Kitteridge as she grows older, navigating the second half of her life as she comes to terms with the changes - sometimes welcome, sometimes not - in her own existence and in those around her.
Olive adjusts to her new life with her second husband, challenges her estranged son and his family to accept him, experiences loss and loneliness, witnesses the triumphs and heartbreaks of her friends and neighbours in the small coastal town of Crosby, Maine - and, finally, opens herself to new lessons about life.
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780241374597
Number of pages: 304
Weight: 341 g
Dimensions: 204 x 138 x 26 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
A novel to treasure... Olive, Again, like Strout's first book, delivers roughly five hours of spine-tingling pleasure. - Sunday Times
Olive, Again is a tour de force. With extraordinary economy of prose - few writers can pack so much emotion, so much emotion, so much detail into a single paragraph - Strout immerses us in the lives of her characters, each so authentically drawn as to be deserving of an entire novel themselves. Compassionate, masterly and profound, this is a writer at the height of her powers - Observer
Emotionally honest, psychologically piercing and ultimately life-affirming - The i
Her writing is exquisite; her vision is boundless. What a sublime book.
A superbly gifted storyteller and a craftswoman in a league of her own. In Olive, Again, she teaches us that there is always more to know about human beings, even the ones we are closest to.
There's no simple truth about human existence, Strout reminds us, only wonderful, painful complexity. 'Well, that's life,' Olive says. 'Nothing you can do about it.' Beautifully written and alive with compassion, at times almost unbearably poignant. A thrilling book in every way. - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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
She gets better with each book
Glorious - The Times
A perfect novel - Financial Times
In Olive Kitteridge, Strout has created one of those rare characters...so vivid and humorous they seems to take on a life independent of the story framing them - Guardian
Elizabeth Strout is... one of the undisputed heavyweights of generous, clear-eyed domestic realism - Daily Mail
A special, precious book...full of hope and humanity - Red
Funny, sad, tender and truthful, this is pure joy - Stylist
A powerful storyteller immersed in the nuances of human relationships - Observer
Strout really can write you into a world until you feel you are there with her, in that house, that life, that little Podunk of a place - The Times
Strout, always good, just keeps getting better - Vogue
A writer at the peak of her powers - Literary Review
It's hard to believe that a year after the astonishing My Name Is Lucy Barton Elizabeth Strout could bring us another book that is by every measure its equal, but what Strout proves to us again and again is that where she's concerned, anything is possible. This book, this writer, are magnificent. - Ann Patchett on 'Anything is Possible'
Strout animates the ordinary with astonishing force - New Yorker
You may also be interested in...
“Less Conspicuous, Again”
Elisabeth Strout is, in my opinion, the finest writer alive today...
She writes with compassion and honesty about the human condition- and dare I say- about the human soul. No writer since Kent Haruf has shown such...
More
“Perfect book on human relationships....”
Olive Kitteridge is back again. Even though, she has aged considerably, she hasn’t changed a bit; still blunt, opinionated, judgemental, prickly but in her own way lovable.
Elizabeth Strout through Olive brings us...
More
“Absolutely Brilliant”
Strout’s short stories are about various people in a small community in the Mid West. She is very sharp in delving into the motivations and ways of thinking in such small communities. Yes, they might be described as... More
Please sign in to write a review
Sign In / Register
Sign In
Download the Waterstones App
Would you like to proceed to the App store to download the Waterstones App?