Well written and engaging. A quick read that eloquently detailed aging in America. Strout once again captures aging and looking back at one’s life.

How wonderful to learn that Olive has mellowed---somewhat. She is still her brusque self but in this narrative she has learned a few things about herself and her relationships. Although she still says inappropriate things that are hurtful, she herself is beginning to suffer the indignities of aging and beginning to understand about loss and regrets. I enjoyed revisiting Olive.

Powerful emotional truthfulness - and unforgettable narrative:
Brilliant novel!!!!

Olive was aware of ludicrous behaviors- unspeakable things spoken - but what she did not understand is why she and her son, Christopher should walk into old age with a high and horrible wall between them.

Olive could be blunt, forthright, frank, and candid.
She had strong opinions- and judgements... she hated people who were late.. etc.
I happened to feel as strong as Olive did about a scene at a baby shower:
“A third gift was presented to Marlene’s daughter, and Olive distinctly felt distress. She could not imagine how long it would take this child to unwrap every goddamn gift on the table and put the ribbons so carefully on the goddamn paper plate, and then everyone had to wait—‘wait’ — while every gift was passed around. She thought she had never heard of such foolishness in her life”.

It was easy to understand Olive’s impatience and judgements. Of course she kept her thoughts to herself - but they were so human.
I could just picture that baby shower— the happy smiling guests - but also Olive - at 70ish years old... and her annoyance.

Another scene was puzzling and quite disturbing. I honestly wondered - where in the world was this coming from.
Kayley, was a young girl who took pleasure and money from a man - Mr. Ringrose - whom she cleaned house for unbuttoning her blouse. He watched - said thank you - then left her an envelope with cash. This went on for nine weeks.
“There was no one Kayley could tell about what had happened, and this knowledge stayed in her and made her almost constantly unwell”.
I won’t say how the short story ends... but it’s one to scratch your head with wonder.

I wasn’t prepared to feel so sad in some of these short stories- but I did.
Olive barely made it though a visit with her son, Christopher - his wife, Annabelle- and their three kids.
Olive was exhausted. Some quiet cruelty- coldness - was making me feel depleted. I felt so sad witnessing the detachment and bitterness between the bratty children and their grandmother - the imperfections of Olive never being to do anything right - not even having enough milk or Cheerios...
My heart was breaking for the pain of ‘each’ of the family members... but I especially felt sad for Olive.
To have to feel rejected - judged by your adult children and grandchildren ‘while’ dealing with aging has got to really hurt. It’s a lonely hurt - that author,
Elizabeth Strout soooooo masterly and gracefully understands. Her skill of unraveling the complexities of family life and relationships is written was deep compassion for humanity.

It was so easy to imagine the different characters muddling through - carrying on - enduring the necessary sorrows and joys of their lives well beyond the pages.

This book is could easily be a stand alone. Strout binds
together rich narratives - crafted much like she did years ago with her Pulitzer winning novel “Olive Kitteridge”... with great insights, tensions, humor startling sadness, and compassion.

One of the most emotionally radiant novels about family- and that what divides us in our relationships- and definitely about aging....that I’ve read in years.

Olive who has become a baggy old woman - thought about this:
“ The way people can love those they barely know, and how abiding that love can be, even when — as in her own case — it was temporary”.

Kudos- huge kudos and congrats to Elizabeth Strout for writing - ‘again’ a keenly observed lustrously imagined marvelous novel.

Thank you Random House, Netgalley, and the astonishing Elizabeth Strout

I just love Olive Kitteridge! I find her extremely funny, quirky and sad all at the same time.

This book shows us how Olive is changing through the years. Just when you think that she has softened she blurts out something that is completely inappropriate. However, Olive simply does not understand that she is inappropriate or sometimes hurtful. She feels the way she feels and thinks that everyone else should feel that way too. It does not occur to her that the things that she says or does could hurt others feelings.

I love that we get to touch base with some old characters in her previous book and we are introduced to some new folks. I enjoyed watching and living through all her changes.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group - Random House for this advanced readers copy. This book is due to release in October 2019.

I appreciate a good work of fiction in which the characters grow, mature, and change for the better in some way. Elizabeth Strout has chosen to revisit cantankerous Olive Kitteridge in Olive, Again, and while Olive has aged since her debut, she has also gained some empathy and compassion, while retaining her brusque honesty. We have the pleasure of reading about Olive struggling to become “oh, just a tiny—tiny—bit better as a person. " This is still not a "feel-good" book, and I'm not sure Olive will be any more likeable to most readers, but I admire her, for her attempts to change, along with her honesty.

These interconnected stories lay bare the fear, loneliness, aging, illness, death, alcoholism, and regrets that Olive and the other residents of Crosby, Maine have experienced. There are even small appearances by the Burgess Boys and Amy and Isabelle from Strout's previous books. Olive is now married to Jack Kennison, and they seem fairly well-suited to one another.
"Jack felt the inner slow burn that was familiar to him, which he felt when that widow talked about the weather in the grocery store. He wanted to say, Stop it! Tell me how it's really been! He sat back, pushed his glass forward. It's just the way it was, that's all. People either didn't know how they felt about something or they chose never to say how they felt about something.
And this is why he missed Olive Kitteridge."

We see Olive show some compassion to the grieving daughter-in-law she never really liked in "Motherless Child", but this also leads Olive to some sad conclusions about her relationship with her son.
"The house where she had raised her son--never, ever realizing that she herself had been raising a motherless child, now a long, long way from home."

Olive, Again is a difficult book to read at times because it makes us realize how alone and full of regrets we ourselves are. Despite this honesty, and maybe because of it, it's completely worthwhile to revisit Olive again.
"I do not have a clue who I have been. Truthfully, I do not understand a thing."

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of the book.

Strout has a way of taking people and turning their quirks into a deeper look at pur shared humanity. No matter how different, we see that they are all just struggling along, trying to find themselves and live their own truth. As always, parts are not easy to read. Another great story.

I’ve never particularly liked Olive Kitteridge. I’ve known her in passing for more than ten years, but I’ve never really <i>liked</i> her: Olive’s too blunt, too judgmental, too free with her opinions, and too school marmish for my tastes. Since I’m among friends, I’ll admit that Olive even strikes me as foreboding: her height, her angularity, her total lack of vanity all leave me uneasy, and I’m always afraid that she’ll direct her formidable intelligence on me.

But now that Olive and I are both undeniably in old age, I thank Elizabeth Strout for helping me to understand Olive so much better. Oh, I still don’t really like Olive, but now I understand her better and I feel more sympathetic towards her. Frankly, I feel for Olive: for her yearning for her son Christopher, for her physically and emotionally distant grandchildren, for Henry and Jack, her two husbands who she outlived. I understand Olive’s humiliation at the indignities of aging: her fall, her heart attack, her leaving her and Jack’s house and moving into the Golden Bridge Rest Home, her social isolation there. I understand Olive when she recognized <i>”with a horrible whoosh of the crescendo of truth: She had failed on a colossal level. She must have been failing for years and not realized it. She did not have a family as other people did.”</i> And most of all, I understand Olive when she admitted that <i>”<b>I do not have a clue who I have been. Truthfully, I do not understand a thing.</b>”</i>

It’s not only Olive that I now understand better. It’s also that unexceptional Dennis Pelletier, who I always thought a little dull: it turns out that he loves — loves — loves his plain wife, who he’s been with since high school, yet he still thinks about that beautiful and brainy Dorie Paige. She went off to Vassar and killed herself right after graduation: can you imagine Denny still thinks about her, fifty years later? And I even understand Suzanne Larkin better. Yes, she’s the one with that rich SOB father who thought he was better than the rest of us. Suzanne’s mother is in the Golden Bridge and never lets go of Snuggles, the stuffed dog that Suzanne loved when she was a little girl. And what about Andrea L’Rieux, who went from being just another Frenchie to being poet laureate of the U.S., but still looks miserable and lonely?

<i>Olive, Again</i> is, simply, marvelous: it’s a novel of remarkable and radical empathy, in which Elizabeth Strout imagines and lays bare the indignities, the horrors, the sadness, and occasionally the unexpected joys of aging. <i>Olive, Again</i> looks deeply into the deep and dark abyss of old age and shines a light on it. Not since Philip Roth’s later novels has an American novelist so honestly dealt with aging: for Roth, it was men; for Strout, it’s women. I know that there’s little justice in literary prizes, recognition, and sales, but if there’s a just literary god, Elizabeth Strout deserves widespread recognition for this remarkable novel.

I would like to thank Random House and NetGalley for providing me with an e-copy of this novel in exchange for a review.

With the accolades and popularity of Olive Kitteridge I understand the pressure to put out a sequel, but unfortunately Olive, Again doesn't deliver. The first book was poetic and vibrant with amazing characters and it's truly one of my favorite books. Olive, Again, however, read like the follow-up treatment to the HBO limited series. Will most people like the sequel, probably. Is it something I'll recommend to friends, doubtful - which is a total bummer.

Thanks yous go to NetGalley and the author for this ARC of Olive, Again. What a gift!

I've been a fan of Olive Kitteridge for years, and recently re-read that book in anticipation of this sequel. I am happy to report that Olive does not disappoint. While the books can be read as stand alones, a true fan will want to read them back to back.

Olive, Again follows a similar path of collected stories, quirky characters and poignant vignettes. Olive is aging. She faces the world with her trademark stoicism and brutally honest observations. Yet we find her showing signs of introspection, attempting to understand those around her. Olive is an interesting character, one who confounds others, one who turns people off. And Olive is the one who people talk to when they feel compelled to share their private stories. Olive is the one people can be real with.

Maybe that is what draws us to Elizabeth Strout's writing. The chance to be real. The opportunity to see that others share our ponderings and our worries.
Maybe we read good writing like this so that we make sense of our world.

I received a free ARC of Olive, Again from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

Strout revisits her character Olive Kitteridge in her latest work. Olive is older, but still feisty and opinionated - qualities that do not always endear her to those around her. And, once again, Strout allows numerous personalities of other Maine residents to have their moments of introspection and reflection, loss and growth. Strout's work could never be described as breezy or light; in can, however, be described as human and multi-dimensional. In many ways, Strout's characters can only be appreciated by someone older, someone with disappointments and a lifetime of personal growth and acknowledgements of personal failure.

Olive's husband, Henry, has died and it is a rather remarkable thing that she has found love again with Jack. Jack is a widower and both he and Olive have their regrets. The key here is that these two and other characters just keep moving forward, doing their best as age and all its indignities become more a part of their daily lives. For Olive it is sometimes hard to get past her long-held prejudices and her petty grievances, many of which are more symptomatic of her lonely nature than her stubborn personality. The one Olive is most disappointed in is herself.

Although Strout mostly reveals characters who are contemporaries of the now elderly Olive, she occasionally has Olive interacting with far younger people. Here readers will find that the self-doubt of living and growing and interacting with others is not unique to any age group or gender. For all, it's two steps forward, one step back.

Olive, Again is not for everyone since it's a deeply personal journey that readers will go on with Olive.

Copy furnished by Net Galley for the price of a review.

Olive Kitteridge is a difficult woman, formidable and even harsh at times.  One who says what she thinks and lets the chips fall where they may.  It would be fair to say she is not universally liked, referred to by some as "that old bag".  The indignities of aging are front and center.  In her 80's now, Olive reflects on the effect of bad memories that follow you through life, profound loneliness, becoming invisible.  These interwoven stories carry with them an intimacy, a kind of melancholy beauty tinged with regret.

I loved Olive Kitteridge when I read it, and wasn't sure what to expect with this sequel. Elizabeth Strout is a wonderful writer, and she did not disappoint. I loved that she used the same format--short chapter vignettes about different residents of the small town of Crosby, Maine, where Olive pops up and we see different facets of this retired math teacher. Everyone has a story, and Strout is a consummate storyteller; we learn of people's marriages, families, friends, loves, deaths, aging, and loneliness. I really didn't want this novel to end. Highly recommended.

Olive Kitteridge has been my all time favorite fictional character for the last ten years. The novel, which I read at least once a year, remains one the funniest, heartwarming, and honest character driven novels ever. Olive Again did not disappoint. This was truly such a wonderful opportunity to go back and visit an old friend. Watching Olive find her way through her latter years was nothing short of amazing.. she was still the same old Olive, abrasive, honest to a fault, yet kind, sensitive and lonely.
Elizabeth Strout has never disappoints. She remains one of the very best fiction Writters ever. It is my hope that she is, as I write this working on a new novel. I cannot thank you enough for my advance copy. And yes I will certainly recommend it to all my friends and family

I found the stories to be disjointed and Olive to be rather abrupt at times sometimes down right mean.

Goodreads review 6/26/19

4.5 stars for me.

Oh, Olive! In Olive, Again, she ambles through town and reflects on aging, on her life and especially memories of moments that together shaped her life’s direction, her attitude, her viewpoint—and those of the people close to her. Because it is Olive, these are not saccharine snippets of wisdom from an elder, but the moments are sometimes sour, sometimes regretful, sometimes heartbreaking, but often lovely in their rough honesty. I could spend days reading about her introspection and her gruff and straightforward ways.

Through Olive and other connected characters in Crosby, Maine, we see lives laid bared of secrets, pain, disappointments—and we also often get to witness true joy emerge during honest and unexpected connections with others, although thankfully Strout doesn’t make any of it too easy or perfect.

I love that Olive, in what seems to be a combination of unintentional and intentional acts, alienates anyone relying on interactions built around small talk or niceties like talking about the weather. Yet she cuts to the heart of tough situations and sits within the pain of them without shying away.

I worried that a book revisiting Olive would feel indulgent or unnecessary, but this is a deep look at aging, intimacy, love, disappointment, renewed hope, betrayal, and redemption. Strout is truly a marvel in the way she crafts full, complicated lives through sharing small moments. I just love it all!

Read Olive Kitteridge for context before picking up this one.

I received an advanced copy of this book from Random House through NetGalley.

I love it when a novel/character who has stayed with me for years gets a sequel! Elizabeth Strout wrote Olive Kitteridge about 10(ish) year ago and I was so excited to dive back into her world once again in Olive, Again!

From the beginning of Olive, Again it felt trying on a pair of your favorite jeans in fall after a long summer! I immediately felt the force of nature that is Olive Kitteridge!! Olive is older and wiser and it seems although she still spews cutting remarks (sometimes appropriately, sometimes not) there is more self-awareness that has come with age. I really appreciated the subtle, none the less major transformation in Olive. I felt Elizabeth Strout did a wonderful job writing Olive in a more senior stage of her life and if Olive Kitteridge hadn’t wormed her way into your heart in the first book, this installment will most definitely accomplish that! Olive, Again is a 5 star novel that does not disappoint!

Elizabeth Strout is such a keen observer of human nature, of our shared condition and she reminds us that life is full of a struggle of some kind for pretty much all of us. In Crosby, Maine you’ll find characters dealing with loneliness, infidelity, alcoholism, sickness, aging, death, regrets, so many regrets. Thankfully, there also is friendship and love and empathy that Olive Kittridge finds within herself to give, because the truths about life are dauntingly sad at times. More than once I stopped between stories to take a breath. This is Crosby, Maine, the small coastal town where our old friend Olive Kittridge lives. In reality it could be anywhere, but of course it wouldn’t be the same unless Olive was there. She’ll tell you exactly what she thinks about you in brutally honest words. She’s not the best wife or mother and honestly she can be pretty brash, but it becomes obvious, though, that in spite of the things she says she cares. I found at times her softer side, her more vulnerable side that aren’t alway evident. I can’t say I liked Olive very much when I started reading [book:Olive Kitteridge|1736739], but by the end of that book I realized how many people she had positively impacted as a teacher and as a neighbor. And by the end of this book, I thought how lucky some of these characters were to have Olive in their lives and I felt for Olive as she endures her own challenges.

As in the first book, Strout skillfully weaves separate stories together, with Olive as the thread, but these books for me felt like novels. On the one hand it’s Olive’s story as she reaches her seventies and eighties . She’s older and maybe a little more self aware, but always trying to understand herself. She’s the center of a number of the stories and we come to know more about her as she comes to know more about herself. Some of the stories will give you that gut punch, when Olive comes to painful moments of recognition about her family, her friends and acquaintances and of course herself. In some of the stories she makes a real connection and engages with another character and only makes an appearance in others. Crosby and this book are populated with realistic characters, including Olive who are filled with fears, flaws, frailties that are easily recognizable in ourselves. What can I say about the writing, other than its impeccable. I felt the pull of these characters from the opening lines of pretty much every story. Strout is a fabulous story teller and is on my list of favorite writers. I definitely recommend that [book:Olive Kitteridge|1736739] be read first in order to fully appreciate the place in her life where Olive has come at the end of this book.

I received an advanced copy of this book from Random House through NetGalley.

Another beautiful story by one of my favorite authors. She always gets right to the heart of humanity in all of her writings. She could write about Olive until the cows come home and every story would be beautiful.

The first time I read Olive Kitteridge I didn't really know what to make of her. I loved discussing the book and Strout's writing is always just so good but I didn't enjoy Olive at all. Flash forward to Olive, Again and I am older and Olive is older and I totally came to love her. The characters are all so real and all so fragile and all so Maine. I couldn't put this book down and was so disappointed when it was over.

A welcome fictional return to Crosby, Maine where we revisit its residents, most notably Olive Kitteridge. Olive is still blunt and cantankerous, yet increasingly self-aware as she faces the challenges of aging and of changing relationships. As a reader, I was again pulled into Olive's mind and world, fascinated by her evolution and by the experiences of Strout's other vividly drawn, sometimes heartbreaking characters. A solid four stars from me, with thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.