#31
Title: Olive Kitteridge
Author: Elizabeth Strout
Genre: Fiction - short stories
Challenges: 100+, Read and Review, Pages Read, Book-a-Week, Read Your Own book, 100 Shots of Short Reading, Book Awards
Rating: B+
Published: 2008
Dates read: 5/5/09 - 5/30/09

From the back cover - “At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.

“As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life -- sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty. Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition -- its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires.”

This book won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this year (2009) and is a compilation of short stories about the life and Olive Kitteridge and what impact she has on and impression she leaves with other people in her town. I could identify with her son and the manipulative way she treated him in the story, Security. In reading this I completed the Book Awards challenge.