I value Elizabeth Strout very highly as an author, loved her previous books and was therefore surprised that I did not take to "Olive, again" at all. The book felt grim and harsh and where I previously chuckled at the wonderful nastiness of some of the characters, this was not the case with "Olive, again". So perhaps I am one of the view who feel this way, but voila, that is what it is.

Loved this book...as good as if not better than the prequel. Brilliant writer and some sad and some witty cameos. Be a great Christmas present

Highly poignant and elegant prose reintroducing the reader to Strout’s indefatigable protagonist; Olive Kitteridge. This is a very welcome sequel to Strout’s previous offering, with Olive’s 2008 incarnation as a younger mother and wife but, irrefutably and primarily, herself. Olive’s cantankerous, idiosyncratic, unfiltered voice is a joy to hear and Strout is a master of nuanced characterisation.

Just as wonderful as the first book! Olive was just as wonderful too. I found it quite strange reading about her becoming older and the changes she went through: my mum is going through similar at the moment. Elizabeth Strout knows how to get inside the people she writes about and the stories are touching, sad, funny; Olive reviews her life through a long lens as her own life reaches its final stages.

What a joy it was to spend more time with Olive Kitteridge, as wry and brutally honest as ever.

‘Olive, Again’ reunites us with the blunt, yet deeply loveable Oliver Kitteridge as she grows older, more self-aware, and comes to terms with the changes within herself and in those around her. Returning to Crosby, Maine, Strout skilfully weaves separate stories together, with Olive as the thread, exploring the depths of human nature. Each story is built of quiet melancholy and epiphanies in which characters understand something new about themselves. How strange our feelings are. How temperamental they can be. Nonetheless, Crosby is a small coastal town brimming with love and friendship. Whether they bump into her in the doughnut shop or quote something she once said in math class, Oliver Kitteridge has had a positive impact on a myriad of people.

Although Olive is as contentious as ever, she undergoes a steady transformation into a wry elderly woman who is more conscious and accepting. Yes, she’s cantankerous and contradictory, but she cares. She undertakes a journey of self-awareness, even succumbing to the idea of wearing the detestable Depend underwear as she grows into her eighties. It is with this that Strout exhibits her incredible storytelling, eloquently expressing the indignities of old age with quiet acceptance.

Few writers can pack so much emotion into mere sentences, her realistic characters making me both laugh and cry. From the beginning, I felt the pull of the characters and connected to every one of them. It was such a joy to follow their transformations, especially our controversial Olive. The most heart-warming moments were those in which she connected with people who she had previously dismissed, ultimately finding solace in female friendship.

This is an absolute gem of a book that everyone can fall in love with.

This was a great read. Loved the characters - not just the main ones but all the quirky individuals that appeared throughout the book. It was a really nice bit of escapism - I w2ould definitely recommend it.

Perfection. Cranky, bitingly honest and with a tongue as sharp as a tack Olive doesn't disappoint. A beautiful and funny take on life as a 'pensioner' except of course Olive and her romantic interest don't really see themselves that way. Their dealings with their adult children and grandchildren as well as reflecting over their lives is a funny and precious addition to what we already know about Olive. Yes there is disappointment and frank reflection but it's all the more authentic for it. Adored it and will be giving it to friends and family for Christmas.

I did find this book very strange and think I would have understood it more if I had read the first book in the series. It is still a good book but can be hard to follow at times

Olive Again is badged as the story of the later life of Olive Kitteridge, however a large proportion of the book was taken up with events in the lives of various families in Crosby, Maine, who had a (sometimes slim) connection to Olive. This led to a slightly disjointed tale, which was disappointing. It was also rather pedantically written in places - I lost track of the number of times ‘her first husband Henry’ was mentioned, as if the reader was also ageing and losing their short term memory.

Olive’s story, when it came, was actually quite interesting - her relationships with second husband Jack, her son and his family, and her friends were well developed and would have made a good book on their own, with more direct interaction with other characters. Overall, a shame as it could have been really enjoyable.

I embarked on 'Olive Kitteridge' because it was so widely recommended in the media reviews, but also among people I met. And I didn't warm to it at first. The construction as a series of connected short stories proved a surprise! But I soon found myself intrigued by the character of Olive herself - so blunt and cantankerous, and yet misunderstood.

Meeting her again in this second instalment was a real delight. She seems more mellow, more willing to reach out, and she seems more relaxed and accepting of life. We see her in a new relationship which turns to marriage and then widowhood. She still struggles in the relationship with her son, and her grandchildren. She seeks to get alongside her friends and neighbours and give them support and straight talking.

The time period moves swiftly - there seems little opportunity for us to enjoy, with Olive, her second marriage, before he has passed away.

There is one story which sits awkwardly, I felt. A teenage girl, Kayley, takes a cleaning job for a local elderly couple and the tone of the subsequent events seemed misplaced to me in this book.

But I will return to Olive's world time and again, I hope. I loved this book.

At first I was unsure of this, in parts it felt like a child writing. But I overcame that and truly loved this book. I really love Olive Kitteridge. She’s a very wise lady and I found myself liking her more and more throughout the book. I’m missing her already.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC in return for an honest and unbiased opinion.

With thanks to Viking an NetGalley for an advance copy in return for my honest review.

It is 11 years since the Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge was published, but I read it and its sequel back to back and they could easily have been one book, such is the seamless continuity in tone and chronology.

Olive is a wonderfully drawn character. She is very far from being likeable, but is all too human. Elizabeth Strout's great strength lies in taking a prickly, seemingly unloving if not downright mean mother, wife and neighbour, and getting under her skin so that we as readers aren't able to simply dismiss her as an old hag not worth wasting our time on. We get to know her, along with a host of other residents of a small Maine seaside town, via a series of vignettes, almost interrelated short stories, over the course of a number of years. In Olive Again, Olive is an elderly lady, widowed and remarried to a man she would never have considered in her younger years. Her son, who in the first book moved to new York, is still there with his second wife and a brood of children, only one of whom is Olive's natural grandson. She persists in failing to understand why he moved so far away, though he has mellowed somewhat towards her and they speak on the phone and even come for a (rather unsuccessful) visit once. Her own previous visit to them in New York does not go well thanks to her prickliness and her utter lack of openness to his attempt to explain how he feels she has failed him as a mother.

Olive's marriages are both characterised by her lack of warmth, and husbands who seem to take this in their stride in very different ways. She feels love, but seems incapable of expressing it, and she has long spells of formless rage at the world which she does not understand, face or properly control. However, her actions speak much louder than her words, and the various vignettes often show her trying to please her loved ones, or picking up on near-strangers' moments of desperation to the extent of perhaps preventing a suicide attempt. She loves the beauty of her small coastal New England town, forms some meaningful friendships, and late in her life comes to have the odd moment of epiphany an self-insight. This does not really bring her much comfort though, if anything it shows her that much of what she fells she has suffered has been brought upon herself.

The dominant themes are introspective ones of grief, regrets, family conflicts and the loneliness of growing old. But through these, with wonderfully concise, precise prose, Elizabeth Strout also shows how every life is also shot through with moments of epiphany, deaths are matched by births, misunderstandings with some people are mitigated by life-changing moments of sensitivity with others, despair with the light of hope. And so life goes on. This is a magnificent, heartbreaking, compassionate book and like its predecessor, deserves to sweep the board with prizes and be read by anyone who has lived a full, flawed, human life and is growing older. Utterly wonderful.

A friend introduced our bookgroup to Elizabeth Strout a few months ago & since then I have read several other of her works. I loved the previous books I have read by her & was hoping this would be similar – it was. Olive Again is the second book featuring Olive Kitterage. I haven’t read the first and don’t feel that this affected my enjoyment of the book at all.

Olive lives in a small town in Maine. She is a retired school teacher with plenty of observations and opinions about the people around her. In this book we meet Olive when she is getting older, contemplating a second marriage and then on to a retirement home. This book is a collection of snippets concerning Olive & the people around her. Just everyday snippets of news that you may hear in a corner shop – not big newsworthy murders, rapes or burglaries.

I love the way this author writes. In just a few words she can set a scene and capture the essence of a character. Olive is wonderful, certainly not backward in coming forward. In reality I feel she would be a hard person to like but within the pages of a book she is just brilliant. She makes judgements on herself & the others around her – who hasn’t walked down the street and thought about other people passing by – what they are wearing, how they have aged etc. Olive does this but doesn’t always keep her opinions to herself!

This is an easy read which just flowed off the pages. Great for holiday reading as it was easy to put down & pick up again. I just loved the characters that Elizabeth Strout has created & shall keep my eye out for the first book about Olive Kitterage.

I received this book free via Netgalley.

I was sent a copy of Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout to read and review by NetGalley.
I have to say I didn’t really like this book. I wasn’t keen on the way it was written; very often it had the feel of a children’s book with the writing being very plain and stilted, also the content was very depressing and sometimes rather random. I really didn’t care at all about any of the characters and personally I am quite amazed that this author has won such prestigious prizes for her work. This is my first (and probably last) foray into the work of Elizabeth Strout and perhaps her previous novels were written in a different style and may have pleased me more. If you have already read and like her work then I am sure you will enjoy ‘Olive, Again’ but if you haven’t then I would suggest thinking carefully about whether to read this over another author whose writing you know and love.

Elizabeth Stout is an incredibly good storyteller and this second novel featuring the irascible Olive Kitteridge is simply brilliant. This is a really touching novel which, with compassion and poise, gets to the heart of humanity and what it means to get through life. It is captivating in its depiction of everyday existence but also the currents which run beneath it.

Set in Crosby, Maine, the small coastal town where Olive lives, the narrative follows both her life and, in a series of short stories, the other characters with whom she engages. If you have read the previous novel, Olive Kitteridge, you will be aware that Olive can be forthright if not rude, impatient and critical. However underneath the strident manner Olive really does care about people and is painfully aware of her own shortcomings.

This is an emotionally honest depiction of people’s lives told with such perfect observation. It is heartbreakingly beautiful. It is one of my books of 2019.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Olive, Again follows the same structure as Olive Kitteridge, a series of linked vignettes featuring the inhabitants of Crosby, Maine, in which Olive herself features to varying degrees. Sometimes she has merely a walk-on part, sometimes she plays a more significant role in a story and occasionally she’s the main focus but in every case there’s a meaning attached to her appearance that may only become evident to the reader later. Events in the book unfold over a number of years, during which the reader witnesses major events in Olive’s life.

Those who’ve read Olive Kitteridge will be pleased to know that Olive is her same outspoken, honest, slightly irascible self. She’s someone who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, as exemplified by her reaction to the baby shower she attends – and which of us hasn’t been at a social event where we’ve longed to have the courage to say the sort of things Olive does! But she also has an uncanny instinct for what others need, demonstrated in -for me – one of the most moving stories, ‘February Light’, where Olive is the only person who seems to know the right thing to say to a dying woman. As one character remarks, “Olive, you’re the kind of person people want to talk to.”

Olive, Again sees Olive in self-reflective mood as well, wondering if there are things in her life she could have done better, especially in regard to her relationship with her son, Christopher, and his family. Relationships between parents and children is one of the recurring themes of the book which also explores ageing and how to face the challenges life brings. Along with those mentioned above, some of my other favourite stories were ‘Helped’, ‘The Poet’ and the final story, ‘Friend’.

Olive, Again is by turns tender, funny, heartbreaking and life-affirming. It demonstrates the observational skills for which the author has become rightly renowned.

Although an avid reader this is not a genre I read a great deal, but I loved Olive Kitteridge and in Olive, Again we are reacquainted with protagonist Olive who reminds all of us that we are perfect with all of our beautiful imperfections; a message many need right now. She very much reminds me of myself in some ways as she doesn't mince her words but is compassionate and sardonic and she has the potential to rub you up the wrong way, however, I feel her honesty is refreshing and you know where you stand with her which is advantageous. You do not have to have read the preceding book to enjoy this one but everything is done so magically that you will likely want to.

Rather than being a single story this, like its predecessor, is a collection of interlinked tales with profound, thought-provoking messages about love, life and loss. It very much reflects on some of the most important philosophical questions regarding our purpose on earth and if any meaning can be attributed to it. In parts, it reminded me very much of the Japanese phrase mono no aware as Olive often reflects on the sad beauty of seeing time pass and the aching awareness of impermanence. Strout is an inimitable writer who stands head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to this genre, and she writes with such emotion and humanity. Astounding. Many thanks to Viking for an ARC.

Olive Again centres around the concepts of love, loss and regret. Olive Kitteridge is honest to a fault which means people either love her or hate her. Following the death of her husband she finds love again with Jack Kennison, also alone after the death of his wife. As we learn more about the people who live around Olive and Jack, we realise that everyone is dealing with some form of loss. Whether it be loss of self, loss of a loved one, or simply loss of purpose. Olive reflects on what it means to grow older, the sense of becoming invisible is also somehow freeing. As the book comes to an end, Olive is once more alone and while she may have learnt a lot of lessons along the way she comes to realise that we never really stop questioning our own existence - 'I do not have a clue who I have been. Truthfully, I do not understand a thing'.

Having only just finished this book, I am feeling a little low as the ending was quite depressing, however, overall, the book was very enjoyable and engaging. I really enjoyed meeting the different characters and working out how they connected with Olive (some, I felt, more convincingly than others). The stories felt very real in a 'truth is stranger than fiction' sort of way. I read the book very quickly and will go on to read more by this author.

Without a doubt “Olive, Again” is one of the books I’ve been most anticipating this year. Elizabeth Strout is a favourite author of mine not only because she writes so beautifully and movingly about the lives of ordinary people, but I often feel a special personal connection to her fiction which is so often set in Maine - where I also grew up. This means her characters and their culture feel so immediately recognizable and familiar to me. However, such inside knowledge isn’t needed to appreciate the drama, comedy and astute insight found in Strout’s enthralling fiction. Certainly one of the author’s most beloved characters is Olive Kitteridge who first appeared in the 2008 “novel in stories” named after her. Olive is loveable in spite of or maybe because of being such an irascible, strong-willed individual. She’s the sort of character I love to read about but would be terrified to meet in real life.

Strout’s new novel picks up with Olive later in her later years when she takes a new husband, makes an uneasy reconciliation with her son and transitions into old age. But, as is typical in Strout’s books and because this is another novel which also functions as a series of interconnected short stories, certain sections focus on other characters in Olive’s community as well. As I talked about in a video earlier this year, I love how this form of novel gives a more rounded picture of a group of characters since you get a series of individual perspectives but also better see their relationships and perspectives on each other. Later parts of this new novel bring certain characters together and you discover what happened to them after their individual sections conclude. In some sections Olive only makes a brief appearance or is referred to glancingly, but essentially this novel revolves around her.

One of the interesting recurrences in this novel are moments where characters are so shocked and unsettled by unexpected incidents that they remember them throughout their lives. It’s remarked how they can’t believe something happens and this disbelief makes it such a haunting experience for them that they don’t entirely trust their memory that it even occurred. This is such a true mark of individual experience in how certain occurrences like this will doggedly and inexplicably stick with us. We’ll obsessively think over them again and again like a puzzle we can never solve. It’s really moving how Strout captures this trait of human experience and how this creates an open-ended sense of life where there are no firm conclusions but only a series of unsettling mysteries which remain from our interactions with others.

A wonderful trait the author gives to Olive is a phrase where she’ll dismiss someone who disagrees with or ignores her by remarking “phooey to you.” While it’s a funny rejoinder, it also takes on a poignancy over the course of the novel in how it shows Olive’s essential alienation from other people and how rather than trying to find a more dynamic way to engage with them she’ll simply emotionally cut herself off. This leads to a relatable sense of loneliness she experiences and feels much more keenly as she grows older and must depend on other people more because she can’t remain as physically independent. What’s so clever about this recurring phrase of Olive’s is that it serves as a verbal tic the character possesses like Scarlett O’Hara dismissing objections people make about her actions by blithely stating “Fiddle dee dee” rather than seriously engaging with them. It’s an idiosyncrasy Olive possesses and something she must learn to mitigate if she is going to form meaningful connections with others.

While it’s often poignant how the novel shows her making this journey, there are moments when the message becomes too overt – such as when Olive finds a way to communicate with a Trump supporter she initially cuts herself off from. In instances like this it’s like the author is intruding upon the narrative too much to make a statement about how we need to form a dialogue between politically opposed individuals in the US. I’m not saying I disagree with this sentiment but in a novel it comes across as overtly didactic. Nevertheless, it shows a consistency of character since Olive is someone who always identified as a liberal democrat who angrily lashes out against republicans like the final section of the first novel “Olive Kitteridge” where Olive is outraged to discover Jack Kennison voted for George W. Bush.

I appreciated how the novel uses different stories to trace the transforming moral values of the culture over many years and different generations. One section concerns a daughter who returns home to inform her parents she works as a dominatrix and that a documentary has been made about her. Meanwhile, her father participates in Civil War re-enactments to physically inhabit an idea of the past. This contrast of activities creatively shows how we test the limits of our identities by inhabiting different modes of being. It also shows how there have been so many changes to what’s deemed permissible in society over time such as an elderly woman who recounts how she was stigmatized when she was a teenager for producing a child out of wedlock, a wife who has an affair with her therapist and a daughter who is estranged from her father after coming out as a lesbian. I’m glad the novel delves into these very different experiences by using this form of a “novel in stories” because it gives a more panoramic picture than if we were only limited to Olive’s point of view.

There’s been a lot of cynicism expressed recently regarding literary novels such as “The Testaments” and “Find Me” that are sequels to previous books. But I’ve enjoyed how each of these books creatively carries their stories forward. It’s like visiting past friends and catching up with them. It also allows for a more expansive portrait of these complex characters and the communities they inhabit – just as Strout has done previously with her character Lucy Barton who she picks up with again in the sequel “Anything is Possible”. Reading “Olive, Again” also speaks to my experience as a person who has changed and grown since first reading about Olive Kitteridge over a decade ago. Like Olive, I’ve had a lot of new experiences since then but I’m not sure I’m particularly any wiser; life just goes on. I loved having this chance to fictionally meet Olive again. More than that, this is a novel filled with so much humanity and exhibits a rare honesty about our relationships and individual foibles.