Friday, February 24, 2012

I visit Crosby, Maine

Olive Kitteridge ****
by Elizabeth Strout

Flannery O'Connor said that short stories reveal character while novels show character development. In my view, Olive Kitteridge, a collection of loosely connected short stories in the tradition of Winesburg, Ohio, does both.

The stories revolve mostly around the title character and the people she knows in Crosby, Maine, over a span of several decades. The stories are not all about Olive, nor do they all take place in Crosby. Neither are the stories presented in chronological order. But, taken individually, each story reveals something about a character at a certain point in his life, while the collection as a whole shows how those characters change.

Crosby has something of the claustrophobia of Winesburg. But Olive is less a commentary about small town America than it is about the extraordinary nature of love among ordinary people. There are all kinds of love in Crosby--romantic love, forbidden love, mother love, love born of loyalty, jealous love, angry love, unrequited love, unspoken love.

Strout shows her characters at some of their finest moments--Olive's husband Henry's pure love for Daisy, his widowed pharmacy assistant--and worst--Olive's visit to her son's family, where she seethes with anger and resentment agains his wife and stepchildren.

The style is simple and elegant, laying the human condition naked and exposed, and manging to celebrate it in all its forms. Americans need more writing like this. Thanks to Ann for recommending.

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