What a joy to spend time with Olive Kitteridge again. An incredible follow-up, this lived up to my very high expectations. Soulful, heartbreaking, brilliant, Strout provides so much insight into humanity in this collection of vignettes. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to read the galley- thank you.

I actually kind of hated Olive Kitteridge when I first read it because I had read it at the wrong time in my life to appreciate it. Then I binged the HBO miniseries and realized I enjoyed it more than I thought (still don't really know how it got that Pulitzer though...). Anyway, oh, hey, Olive's back. But not completely...
This sequel felt a lot more like "here's some vignettes of Mainers and Olive will pop in every now and again." The vignettes were interesting, but like most sequels, Olive's continued narrative felt kind of forced and slightly hokey.
While the sequel didn't have the same power as the original, it was still an enjoyable, fast read for a weekend.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

I didn't realize that there was a previous book about Olive when I chose this book to read. It would be beneficial to have read the first book in order to understand the character better. Not having known the characters it took a while to determine the premise of more a collection of short stories that involve a day in the life of Olive and sometimes Jack. She is a quirky, simple, sometimes intense individual that often 'has no filter' or for the most part, just speaks whatever comes to mind. On occasion you are given what is on her mind without it being spoken. Sometimes it is the day in the life of someone else and how they !at remember Olive or randomly bump into her in town. It is a thought provoking and entertaining study of a quirky character.

Author Elizabeth Strout has decided to have her readers visit Olive, Again, as in Olive Kitteridge, her dry witted heroine from the 2008 award winning novel of interconnected short stories.

Ten years later, Olive is still showing the rough side of her nature yet can't help being part of the everyday world. Her second marriage has it's ups and downs, her son Christopher is in and out of her life and a former student or two pop up when least expected.

Even with her hackles raised, Olive has much to offer to others and while acknowledging her own shortcomings, is not at all about to give into complete despair. This feels like a welcome return and with any luck, we'll get another wonderful HBO adaptation out of it to boot.

It’s been awhile since I read Olive Kitteridge and I had forgotten how much I enjoyed her character.

The format of Olive Again is similar to Olive Kitteridge. We follow Olive as she navigates through life, but we are also introduced to the characters of Crosby, Maine. Each character has a story to tell. They are all connected to Olive in some way. Some of the stories are interesting, some are tragic and some are confusing - just like the characters themselves.

Olive is older and heavier. She is facing her her old age and what it means to be old. Of course she is doing it in typical Olive style - feeling the things we all feel and then saying the things that we never say. Her honesty and bluntness is refreshing.

Her agony at a baby shower as each gift is slowly passed around - we’ve all been there! Her delight at her grandson reciting something he’s memorized, while simultaneously being bored.

The writing is just so amazingly good. The thoughts and feelings of the characters. They are so real.

So good.

I received an ARC of the book.

4.5 stars

I received a complimentary e-book copy of this book from Random House through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. Thank you to Elizabeth Strout, Random House, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book.

Please read "Olive Kitteridge (Olive Kitteridge, #1) before this book as it will help in understanding some of the same characters and the flow of this book. It definitely can be read as a book, but I think that it would be much more enjoyable to read them together.

I did read "Olive Kitteridge (Olive Kitteridge, #1)" some time ago, but the main character, OIive Kitteridge, was like an old friend. Her character made me laugh out loud many times - she is a HOOT!! She was so deep and so real that I would want to have a glass of wine with her while admiring the Maine coast which is breathtakingly beautiful!!

Also, the character development is just so well done. I feel like I could go to Crosby, Maine, where the book is set and recognize the many characters as they walked by me in the street The characters are just like anyone that you would recognize in your neighborhood or town. These are the regular people with real stories that are so very interesting!

Finally, the author, Elizabeth Strout, has a gorgeous and lovely way with words. Her writing is so rich and luscious. I just love reading her books and I have read several!!

HIGHLY RECOMMEND!! But read, "Olive Kitteridge (Olive Kitteridge, #1)' to get the full character development!!

A very profound book! I wasn't quite ready for it. Olive is blunt, judgemental, crass. But I could not put this down.

If you loved Olive Kittridge you will love this read. I have to admit that she is not my favorite character, but I also have to admire her outspoken ways. Having met similar people, sometimes those that speak their mind are those that have the most impact on us. Parts of this read made me laugh and then cry. Sprout knows how to weave a story. Many thanks to Elizabeth Stroudt, Random House, and NetGalley for affording me the opportunity to read this arc of this read, soon to be published in October.

I may be the only fiction reader in America who did not read Olive Kitteridge. So, perhaps I am the only reviewer who will ever write about this book without coming to it with a pre-conceived notion of what it should be.

Publishing industry experts have told me that the average star-rating falls dramatically once a book receives a big award, and Olive Kitteridge is a perfect example. Although it won a Pulitzer Prize for Literature, only 50% of its reviews on Amazon give it five stars. Some suggest that reflects jealousy from other writers, but I believe that’s probably a function of the way big awards set unrealistic expectations.

In any case, I expected Olive, Again to be wonderful and in many (perhaps most) ways it is. I also expected it to be a fairly traditional novel, given the number of people I knew who professed to love the first Olive, and in some ways it was. In some ways it wasn’t. While the book moves chronologically through time (the appropriate flashbacks and backstory notwithstanding), it doesn’t rely so much on a plot as on character arcs. Also, not traditionally, the story is only sometimes about the protagonist. What is special about it is the prose. Impeccable. It often made me smile.

This “novel” is more a collection of short stories than a novel. The stories are all about people in the town of Crosby, Maine, where everyone, it seems, knows Olive. As a former school teacher, she knows nearly everyone in town as a former student or the parent of one. She has also lived in Crosby her entire adult life. Therefore, all the stories—including those that aren’t even tangentially about her—mention her at least once, which helps hold the “novel” together. These mentions also give us a different perspective on Olive’s personality. While we readers might enjoy Olive’s honesty, wit, and inability to deceive—even when it might make her more acceptable—others aren’t always fans of her out-spoken, blustery and crusty ways.

What Strout does well here is make the most of small moments and small interactions while credibly relaying the inner thoughts of the characters involved as they happen. She doesn’t overreach for conclusions or epiphanies, but comfortably and confidently lets the quotidian stand for the quotidian. We see a young teenager, just discovering her budding sexuality, oblige a silent, lusting old man by uncovering and touching herself in full view. The girl enjoys it, even while she senses it is wrong. She weighs the benefits (he gives her a few to 100 dollars each time) with the risks (who’s he going to tell?) and the downside (a bit of guilt and fear of getting caught). What we don’t get from Strout is some kind of moral conclusion, other than what some might read into the fact that the girl ends up hiding and then losing the money she earned.

This view of life as a collection of small moments becomes the final statement in Olive’s life, as she contemplates her own death at and after a neighbor’s funeral: “But it was almost over, after all, her life. It swelled behind her like a sardine fishing net, all sorts of useless seaweed and broken bits of shells and the tiny, shining fish—all those hundreds of students she had taught, the girls and boys in high school she had passed in the corridor when she was a high school girl herself (many—most—would be dead by now), the billion streaks of emotion she’d had as she’d looked at sunrises, sunsets, the different hands of waitresses who had placed before her cups of coffee—All of it gone, or about to go.”

If there is a lesson intended here, and I’m not sure there is, it might be this: don’t expect too much of life. It is a series of moments that become random memories and may not add up to a whole lot. Take comfort in knowing that it’s not supposed to. Olive wraps it up thus: “I do not have a clue who I have been. Truthfully, I do not understand a thing.”

I recommend this book, and I can assure you, you do not have to read the first Olive first to enjoy it.

(My digital advance copy of Olive, Again was provided by the publisher through NetGalley. Thank you to Random House for making this available. This review will also appear at midwestbookreview.com.)

I received an ARC copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for my honest opinion of it. I am so surprised at the great reviews because I thought this book was very boring and could not get through it.

A wonderful collection of related short stories, beautifully written. If you have read Olive Kitteridge, you will appreciate the continuation of her story. Another treat is that the author includes characters from The Burgess Boys and Amy and Isabelle. I loved the original Olive Kitteridge, but I liked Olive, Again even more -- it struck me as kinder and gentler in its treatment of the characters and in the characters' relationships with one another.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for an advanced read in exchange for this review. 



I did not read Elizabeth Strout's first Olive book.  However, I thoroughly enjoyed Olive, Again.  Olive is such a well developed character who somehow finds a way to insert herself into people's lives at the oddest times. What a charming set of loosely connected stories!

I prefer this second volume of linked short stories loosely focused on elderly former math teacher Olive Kitteridge over Strout’s first book about her and some of the other residents of Crosby, a small (fictional) coastal town in Maine. As with the first book, Strout explores ageing, regret, loneliness, the distances between people and their occasional fragile connections. I don’t recall the first book about Olive as well as I’d like but it seems to me (with her now older protagonist) Strout’s concern with the body’s betrayal and certain decline is more in the forefront, and reading OLIVE, AGAIN can be somewhat grim.

Towards the end of the book Strout attempts to lighten the work with a pretty over-the-top story about a long-married elderly couple who haven’t properly spoken to each other in 35 years and who more or less live on opposite sides of yellow tape that divides some of the rooms of the house into “his” and “hers” halves. Their 40-something daughter, Lisa, purposefully returns for a visit, carrying a DVD documentary that has been made about her and her very unconventional “career” choice. (Lisa quotes her junior-high math teacher’s words about the importance of being oneself as a sort of weird justification for her job—something I really couldn’t buy.) This and another story about a teen-aged girl house cleaner who regularly touches her breasts for a voyeuristic elderly man in cognitive decline (who then provides her with envelopes containing large sums of money) just did not convince. Neither did the 73-year-Old Olive’s unfamiliarity with baby shower “protocols”. Living in a small, interconnected town and never having been to a baby or wedding shower before? Not knowing you’re supposed to bring a gift or about the practice of sticking bows on a paper plate which is then fashioned into a hat? (I haven't been around as long as Olive, but even I know about these things.)

Having said this, I found two of Strout’s stories quite powerful. In one, LIGHT, Olive visits and consoles a former student dying of breast cancer. In another, HELPED, a successful middle-aged woman returns to Crosby when her reclusive father dies in a fire that has destroyed the family home. Her father’s solicitor, who knows something of the Larkin family secrets, listens to the woman with attentiveness and compassion. Strout movingly captures the gift of one person being entirely emotionally present for another who is suffering.

I found OLIVE, AGAIN an absorbing and sometimes very affecting read, but there is something in Strout’s work that feels just slightly off to me. Her main character, Olive, (with her no-nonsense bluntness and verbal mannerisms) teeters towards caricature, and the writing just verges on the sentimental. For those reasons, I can't assign a five-star rating.

I just loves this book. Elizabeth Strout is one of my favorite authors. Olive is a one of a kind. Honest to a fault and one of the best characters I’ve read. Elizabeth Strout has managed to weave a story by delving into multiple peoples lives, with poignant understanding of their hardships. All with Olive occasionally interacting with them. Thanks Netgalley. This was great.

Did you like Olive Kitteredge? Even somewhat? If so, you need Olive, Again in your reading life. Strout has outdone herself with this new Olive book. I gave Olive Kitteredge 5 stars but this one deserves more.

Olive is quirky, impulsive, one of a kind, often unlikable and unliked. Also deeply sensitive and so, so sad when she learns how she is seen by others. It is a testament to Strout's powers of observation that Olive is at once completely unique in her appearance, traits and phrases ("hell's bells!") and universal in her feelings. Her actions can make the reader groan, laugh out loud, or talk to the book ("No Olive! You did NOT just tug on the baby shower guest of honor's top and ask her to bring you a plate of food!"). But her impatience, judgment of others, regret, deep loneliness- what are these but central to being human and engaged with others?

What a wonderful exploration of the human condition.

With thanks to NetGalley and to Random House for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Another genius book from a genius. Olive Again is perfect Strout--literary, effortlessly moving. And it is a real pleasure to be with Olive again., I just loved this.

OLIVE, AGAIN—a masterful collection of short stories structured around the memorable (and lovable) curmudgeon Olive Kitteridge—took my breath away. The ruminations on life, love, aging, family, and most notably death incorporated into each story are powerful and unforgettable. Like OLIVE KITTERIDGE, many stories involve Olive in only a peripheral way, but this didn’t bother me as it did when reading OLIVE KITTERIDGE; maybe the difference was that I already “knew” certain characters from Strout’s first book, but I tend to think Strout’s command of the short story was the real reason behind my interest in all of the characters. Be prepared to experience the full gamut of emotions when reading OLIVE, AGAIN: more than once I found myself tearing up and, by the next story, laughing. Thankfully, this is one of those books that requires readers to slow down a bit and reflect upon not only the stories themselves but their own lived experience. Despite some really tough subjects that are broached in OLIVE, AGAIN—and at times feeling absolutely gutted by what I read—I didn’t want this collection of stories to end, and I sincerely hope there’s more of Olive to come. A huge thank you to the Random House and NetGalley for providing me with a free digital ARC copy of OLIVE, AGAIN in exchange for an honest review.

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout is the sequel to Olive Kitterage. The story begins, where the first book ends, with retired teacher Olive, widowed and in her golden years. Olive says what she thinks and has "lost her filter", if she ever had one to begin with, which makes for a delightful read. Strout does a great job finding the humor in aging. I enjoyed this book even more than the first book. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this delightful read in exchange for my honest review.

What a marvelous novel this is! Strout tells her stories of the different characters and Olive is the thread that binds them. Olive is older now. She says what she thinks and is very honest. She may be a role model for me.
Many thanks to Random House and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

In this sequel to Olive Kitteridge, the books picks up where the first one ended and we find Olive in her golden years. Her husband Henry has died. Her son Christopher is living far away from Maine in NYC with his family. Olive is lonely. So she and Frank, a man who also lost his mate after a long marriage, get married. After 8 happy years Frank dies and Olive once again is alone.

The 13 linked stories that make up the book span 10 years. Once again many of the stories are about people in that area of coastal Maine who have some connection to Olive. Several are about Olive and her interaction with her friends and family. Old age has not mellowed her and she is still as outspoken as ever. She experiences challenges like many other rural elderly folks including loneliness, infirmity, loss of independence and serious illness. She also discovers that love is all around her.

I enjoyed this book because it got me thinking about the difficulties that the elderly experience. The author does not set out to scare readers but uses plain language to show us what life is for elderly folks in their final years.

I received this ARC from Net Galley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.