Welcome back Olive - its been an absolute pleasure to meet you again! I revisited Olive as someone who had taken a little time to warm up with the previous book "Olive Kitteridge" but ended up loving it, and I was intrigued to see how I felt about this book. Both books are essentially a series of short stories about the residents of Crosby, Maine, with the presence of Olive running through them as a thread. As someone who is generally not a fan of short stories, Elizabeth Strout's skill as a storyteller won me over. She writes so beautifully and so engagingly about the nuances of life, in such a low key yet absorbing way, and Olive, Again is another example of why she is such a talented writer. Olive Kitteridge is a complicated, flawed women but Olive, Again shows her gaining a certain amount of self-awareness as part of the ageing process. Strout's skill is in making Olive complicated and yet still loveable, and in covering so many difficult topics such as alcoholism, infidelity, loneliness, ageing and death. It is one of those books that makes you stop and reflect, and I carried many of the stories with me each time I closed the book, leaving me to reflect on the twists and turns of life. By the time I reached the end of the book, I felt I was saying goodbye to a friend, and one i will miss.

Here we meet Olive Again - literally! It stands alone as a read you don’t need to have read the initial book. Olive you will fall in love with and I’m sure anyone who loves to read will enjoy the book

Olive again. Elizabeth Strout.

I hadn’t read the first book published by Strout “Olive Ketteridge” but you can easily read “Olive again” as a stand alone.
In this book we meet Olive who is in her later years through interlinking short stories we learn about her life her loves her likes and loathes. She is a wonderfully, complex character who has her flaws, but who i also found most likeable. I really enjoyed this book it made me step back and think and also reflect on how people see me.
Thankyou to the publisher and Net Galley for allowing me to read this book.

Olive, again | Elizabeth Strout

Bluntly real.

Olive, again is a collection of short stories tied together into a novel. Across the entire book you see Olive Kitteridge progress into her 80s alongside her second husband and she takes you on the ride through her progressing age and unique outlook. Scattered throughout the book are tales of friendship, family, illness, birth and death.

Olive is a hypnotic character who is easy to care for. I felt her frustration when grasping for sympathy and understanding from her friends and family, who could only really see her as proudly abrupt and aggressively honest. This behaviour is completely normal to Olive. She is misunderstood.

I really enjoyed reading a book written from the perspective of an older woman. Often viewed as the unforgotten of society, the thoughts, feelings and worth of this generation are represented tenaciously in this book. Whilst imperfect, Olive’s the correct level of both eccentric and believable.

However attractive Olive’s character, I wish that more of the book focused on her. I found myself racing through the short stories of her acquaintances to see their tedious connection just so I could get back to the character that I was fascinated with.

The off-shoot stories were interesting and most were a pleasure to read - they really highlighted the imperfect nature of people and their innate feelings for most things, including sex, death, relationships.

Olive, again holds the pure honesty that life is sometimes missing.

Believe all the good things people have written about this author, Elizabeth Strout, and all the good things written about her character Olive. For those who are not so convinced re-read! I was a doubter at first but then started reading when the tv wasn’t on and nobody was trying to talk to me and found that I totally inhabited Olive’s world as if she was a friend who was telling me about her life.

It is so refreshing to have a character who isn’t always right or nice, surely none of us are, and Elizabeth Strout has developed a lady who can sometimes be kind and thoughtful and at others rude and abrupt. What an interesting read by a very clever and different author.

I didn't realise how much I'd missed Olive until I read 'Olive Again'! This is a beauty of a book - a privileged peek at the latter years of Olive Kitteridge and the lives of those she touches. Olive herself is so perfectly realised - a gem of a character painted with real love and affection, warts and all - that it's hard to believe she's a creature of fiction. I was sorry to finish the book and leave her behind all over again.

This book could be about any one of us - our innermost feelings about everyday life.. Olive is growing older. She doesn't much like this, but in her stoic way she deals with every bump in the road that is her life. I learned a lot about myself in this book - and gained an insight into how other people might see me.
Compelling reading, thank you Net Galley for the advance copy. I am now reading Elizabeth Strout's other books.

I love Strout's writing, and I quite enjoyed the first book of this series. So, I couldn't wait to read this one.
I wasn't disappointed. It was very close to the first one in style, and brilliant. The way the characters were built, and some topics brought into the story like ageing was really good. Olive is a weird character, that surprises you, which is another thing I love.
So, I loved this one as much as the first one.
My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

Well, when I started this book I wasn’t sure I’d really continue. Jack seemed somewhat weird and cantankerous and I was on holiday after all. Who need that negativity-right? Then in comes Olive- I hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting her before and she seemed a bit weird too! On top of that, I quickly realised, there was the subject matter of ageing. Too close to home? But no....what a well written, insightful, potentially depressing but actually inspirational book. I LOVED it. Yes I’m still reflecting on it but I’m grinning at some of the coping strategies and just love how Olive made such a difference to those she took time to listen to. This book has many many levels. Book club gold I think!

I love Elizabeth Strout - she has a way of getting to the heart of a character in the smallest amount of words - a gesture, a fleeting thought, a shift in their understanding. However, this wasn't as strong as a whole as I'd hoped. I wanted to spend more time with Olive and some of the sections that focussed on others, while still having moments of brilliance, didn't quite gel for me. I'm glad I read this but it wasn't a luminescent as her other works. 3.5 stars. Thanks to the publisher and #netgalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to netgalley.co.uk for giving me a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

I feel I must start this review by saying that I did not realise that this was the second book of a series until I looked it up on Goodreads, however, I do not feel this ruined the story for me. I feel like I still had a clear idea as to what was going on. I thought the book was brilliantly written, it made me want to know about the characters and how they were developed in the first book.

Olive, Again is a novel that is boldly observant, honest and searches for apperception. The story of the indomitable Olive Kitteridge follows on two years after her husband Henry’s death, but with Olive a little more introspective on how she, as a person, her behaviour and relationships have transpired as she ages to an old woman.

Two years after Henry’s death, Olive starts a relationship with Jack Kennison, which is touching, meaningful and wonderfully portrayed. Jack is also a widower with some history, where an unfortunate affair and dubious sexual assault claim, ended his career as a Professor at Harvard University. Jack’s relationship with Olive develops and while it creates new possibilities and feelings it opens the door on how they behaved towards their respective spouses. How they both missed them and how lucky they are to have each other. It also sparks the realisation that people hide emotions and worries they can’t explain, and which subconsciously agitate prejudices towards the world. Olive is a person who doesn’t step reservedly into how she perceives the world and how quick she is to comment about people in it. As Jack notes

“People either didn’t know how they felt about something or they chose never to say how they really felt about something. And this is why he missed Olive Kitteridge.”

Olive uncloaks her deepest concerns and reflects for the first time that she may have contributed to the broken or strained relationships she had, especially with Henry and her son Chris. Considering her marriage to Henry, she reflects that as the years passed the more distant her heart became and the needier his became, to the point where she resented his touch – which was unfair. Wondering about her son’s marriage, Olive catches a glimpse of some hidden moments. The door to their relationship slightly opening. Peering into the darkened interior and seeing what she was not meant to see. “Her son had married his mother.” This was how Olive had behaved to her husband, not realising that “… she herself had raised a motherless son.”

The novel delivers what a special book does above entertainment; it creates the scope to connect the writing to your own stories or those you are close to. It enables you to view issues through a different lens and wonder are these the events you couldn't face or appreciate. We push these notions into the darkest corners of our mind and wrestle with them when we let them loose.

While the first book had an overarching theme of betrayal this book searches for awareness and resolution, and uses various threads to provide amazing glimpses into the difficulties people face in life especially with the burden of illness, family misunderstandings or psychological trauma. The scenarios are intriguing and captivating and along with beautiful prose, this book is a joy to read. I felt this was slightly better than the first book. It was much less a work of short stories and more a narrative of Olive with threads and dialogue that expanded around her.

This is one of my favourite books of the year and it certainly didn’t disappoint after the long wait for the sequel. I highly recommend reading this book and I'd like to thank Penguin Books, Viking and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC version in return for an honest review.

This is a great read - it's sad and funny. Olive is a wonderfully drawn character. An outsider in her own life, she sees and understands nothing and everything at the same time. Now older, Olive does have more self-awareness and more empathy than in the first book but it's still a struggle for her.

A really compelling and satisfying read.

It was an absolute joy to reconnect with Olive Kitteridge again. Olive, Again is funny, sharp, moving and beautifully written.

An excellent revisiting of Olive and the characters and settings. All of Elizabeth Strout's writing is quietly masterful and assured. You're in safe hands with her and know you will get literary treat. This doesn't disappoint.

In this novel we welcome back Olive Kitteridge seen in a previously. It will cover the years of her later life when she is widowed, meets and marries her second husband Jack, is widowed for a second time, getting older deals with illness and goes into sheltered housing. Olive lives in Crosby Maine. In a repeat of Strout’s previous style, this tale will be presented as a series of chapters – in some Olive will be reflecting on her life, others where she is incidental to others in the community, her husband Jack, neighbours, former pupils and others in greater or lesser detail. The tale of her life evolves through these vignettes. Olive still sees herself as gawky and struggling to maintain close friendships or a positive relationship with her family – specifically her son who has moved well away and is now married with four young children.
The novel opens with Jack, a lonely widower, estranged from his gay daughter, recently moved to the area after being a senior faculty member at Harvard, suspended and then retired amidst allegations of sexual harassment and/or discrimination. Meeting live they will become friends and lovers. Bizarrely to themselves they each fall soundly for the other and take delight and comfort in the relationship while recognising they are completely at odds with each other in behaviour and outlook.
The other tales and characters that intermingle with Olive show the nature of semi-rural American life with the issues of failing and broken marriages, financial difficulties, urban flight of the more academic and the many remaining inevitably bedded into a multi generational community where people may know a lot about each other. People have to live with their reputations and expectations laid on them. There is also the gradual unravelling of secrets - infidelity, marital violence, real parentage, child sexual abuse, isolation or neglect of the elderly. Beyond that are the slowly (or not) changing social mores and technological improvements and communication drawing differences out between the generations. Global changes impact too with the immigration of a substantial Somali community.
But ultimately this is another window into how people build their relationships with their family members and community. Whether they have the skills and experiences to do it well, whether they had the chance to learn it in their childhood. It is about whether Olive’s view of herself – harsh - is totally justified, or indeed whether she is any worse (albeit in a different way) to others.
Behind that is the issue of aging – aging with loss of health, mobility, memory and of course family, people and occupations which formed the daily structure to life. Olive as she faces these challenges, not always happily, will also carry the constant worry that she has managed her family links badly. This will lead to attempts to put them right, attempts that do not necessarily work; causing the next round of thoughts as to whether she is capable of ever doing things better. Does she know the route to better – does she have time or capacity to learn?
Strout is a brilliant and piercing writer, painting a clear picture of both the physical and practical communities she depicts. Her repeated chapters skewering an issue of community life are so cleverly put together as to be compelling – even if they do not immediately seem to be bringing Olive’s story forward. But it must be said that Olive with her insistence on examining her actions present and past in depth is not always a comfortable read – Strout has the capacity to use her tales to evoke deep memories or even regrets in a reader – even one who has never been to Crosby, or lived so long.
This is a novel that needs to, and can be, read slowly, so that each phase can be mulled over as she moves Olive’s life along. Very much a book for the book club that enjoys deeply personal novels of life – life that does not carry great incidents other than those akin to the reality of ordinary lives.

Olive Kitteridge returns in Olive Again along with the small town of Crosby in Maine. As before she is the character who holds the novel together. This is an empathetic and perceptive novel with an unforgettable personality as its chief protagonist. No matter the imperfections Olive has, she is unforgettable. She is not always onstage because the novel is also a series of vignettes showcasing a gallery of characters and their stories. These are sometimes life affirming but many would break your heart. As before, Olive is an astute observer. This time, she is widowed, will face her own life changing dilemma and enter a new relationship. This is to her son's absolute horror. Life is revealed in the microcosm of Crosby as Olive dips in and out of peoples' lives. Now well into her seventies Olive is still learning from her experiences. She, too, grows as the book progresses. It is a compassionate, funny, cry out loud, laugh out loud , tragic, brilliantly constructed bagatelle of a book. It oozes the atmosphere of small town America, yet, importantly, it reaches wider than that microcosm, reminding us of the disversity of human emotions. The novel is written in masterful prose which makes it a joy to read. Always one returns to Olive, not perfect but very endearing , sharp, funny and large inside and out. A delightful book, wonderfully told, and highly recommended.

Where to start, and what to read next after finishing this superb book which satisfies on every level. Each turning of the page delivers untold joys that only an exceptional writer can deliver. A small town in Crosby Maine the inhabitants perceiving themselves as middle class. The opinionated maths teacher of the local school, Olive, our chief protagonist, knows everybody, respected but unliked by the community and never short of a quip or putdown. The inhabitants, outwardly respectable all living in their own secret hell whilst Olive, in general conversation slowly discovers the underbelly of her neighbours. Every facet of life is exposed. There is murder, insanity, broken families, affairs, terminal illness , births and deaths all supported or destroyed by the ghosts from the past and all revealed exquisitely by our retired teacher as she goes about her daily routine. The passing of the seasons, the beauty of each month in is natural glory descriptions worthy of Thomas Hardy, all form a natural backdrop of scenery to an emerging and evolving drama played out by the local people as they travel through life with its happiness, tragedy and drama. And just as we experience the inconvenience of an unexpected and untimely birth, so we live, with Olive through the ebbing of her once fulfilled satisfying life to the awareness and recognition of the changes and loneliness and isolation of old age. A diary exposes an individuals secrets. Through conversations with her friends, neighbours and family we the reader become intimate with the inhabitants of Crosby. Deeply interested and caring about their story and wishing we could linger in their lives long after their chapter is over and the book moves on. It is impossible to rate this book alongside others as it stands in a class of its own , superlative and perhaps a second read will deliver even more joy and satisfaction if that is possible. Will definitely be a best seller and a future classic.

Just as good as Olive Kitteridge but perhaps more sympathetic to Olive towards the end of her life and her reflections on her earlier life as wife and mother. Very well written account of the inner life of a complex character

Olive, again. Olive Amazing, again ! Such a delight to return to this amazing character and the joy that s the writing of Elizabeth Strout. All the stories, the characters are so meaningful, so wonderful, each is a joy as once you dive in you won’t want to leave
Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion