Olive Kitteridge

The Pulitzer Prize for fiction this year went to Olive Kitteridge, a collection of connected short stories by Elizabeth Strout. All of them deal with the residents of a fictional coastal Maine town, and all of them contain, in some way or another, a mention of the title character. She's quite a creation: a former math teacher, a wife, a mother, and a force of nature. She's a woman who doesn't suffer fools gladly and kind of barges her way through life. She's not entirely likable, but she's always interesting.

About half of the stories are about Olive directly, while in the rest she makes cameo appearances or is just mentioned second-hand (in two stories she's remembered by ex-students of hers). The stories about her are best, describing her marriage to the eternally cheery Henry, and her dour son Christopher, whom she loves desperately and despairs when he marries and moves to California. In "Little Bursts," Olive deals with her son's wedding day, and overhears her new daughter-in-law make an insulting comment. Her revenge, while petty, is absolutely delicious. "Tulips" has Olive visiting a couple who have become recluses after their son committed a horrible crime, and she realizes that she's only visiting because she wants to experience someone who has a worse relationship with their son. The strongest story is "Security," which covers her visit to Christopher in New York City, where he has married for a second time. Strout expertly dissects the passive-aggressiveness of a New Englander as she struggles to maintain a relationship with the son who has slipped away from her.

The stories about other Maine residents are more hit and miss. I liked "Starving," about an elderly man who has turned to adultery when his wife has given up sex, and ends up getting involved with an anorexic girl, and "Ship in a Bottle," about a young girl who is left at the altar and then tries to break away from her eccentric mother. I wasn't as crazy about "Incoming Tide," which bears an uncomfortable similarity to a plot point of It's a Wonderful Life, or "Criminal" and "The Piano Player," both about lonely women that seem cliched.

The stories in this book also have a tendency to rely on shocking violence. There's the son who murdered his wife in "Tulips," and a young man shot in a hunting accident in "Pharmacy," but there's also the crime that Olive and Henry fall victim to in "A Different Road," which seems like an episode of prime-time TV more than literature. Of course death is a constant presence in the lives of these people, but it seems unlikely that there'd be so much carnage in a sleepy Maine village.

Aside from that, the stories are expertly written. Strout shows a magnificent sense of detail, and I really felt I knew Olive by the last story, when, almost against her will, she finds love again after the death of her husband. Stories about older people aren't common these days, and it's nice to see them treated with care here. Strout creates real people in a real place.