Olive Kitteridge

The Nobel prize in literature will not be awarded this year because some men can’t keep it in their pants. The academy experienced backlash for its association with Jean-Claude Arnault, who faces 18 allegations of sexual assault and physical abuse. Instead, two prizes will be given next year. In the meantime, readers can turn to the Pulitzer Prize for guidance on the best fiction of 2018.

Unfortunately, I feel like the 2009 Pulitzer, Olive Kitteridge*, failed us a bit. The novel by Elizabeth Strout is a collection of 13 short stories that feature a fictional woman, Olive Kitteridge, in one way or another. Sometimes the story is told from her perspective, sometimes it is not. Sometimes she is the main character, sometimes she’s only peripherally mentioned. Although the stories jump around in point of view, they pass through time linearly. So, we initially experience Olive indirectly as a middle-aged wife and mother in Crosby, Maine and we eventually experience Olive directly as an old woman who has undergone many life changes.

Seeing her character grow through a multitude of lenses certainly shapes my perception of Olive as three-dimensional. It gives me empathy and reveals how much she understands her own weaknesses and strengths. That being said, I don’t like her as a person. I think that’s fine; not everybody likes everybody.

I don’t need to rally for the short story structure more than I already have, but Strout’s writing takes the format to a whole new level. She gives us detailed snippets of different character’s worlds (and in doing so, inhabits completely different voices) while connecting those pieces into a complex matrix. I admire her work and appreciate her ability.

Still, I’m not crazy about the story, nor am I sold on the worthiness of Olive’s character to be featured in such a prominent manner. In an interview, Strout says, “the quotidian life is not always easy, and is something worthy of respect” (Strout, 281). While I agree with her, Olive’s life simply did not draw me enough to regularly want to read the book, and I found it difficult to finish.

So, Olive Kitteridge is good enough but not necessarily meritorious of the Pulitzer. I don't buy into the hubbub, so it receives 2 out of 5 camel humps. I gave fellow Pulitzer novel American Pastoral 2/5 as well. Other Pulitzer-winning novels that I bestowed 3/5 humps include: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, A Visit from the Goon Squad, Beloved, All the Light We Cannot See, and The Old Man and the Sea. I gave Interpreter of Maladies a well-deserved 4/5. To Kill a Mockingbird and Middlesex top us off with 5/5.

*Strout, Elizabeth. Olive Kitteridge. New York: Random House, 2008. Print.