Culture This & That

This one’s about small town life in the fictitious coastal town of Crosby, Maine, and it does not disappoint. As bored people in small towns are wont to do, Elizabeth Strout’s bored (but not boring) characters in Olive Kitteridge get up to no good and are all up in each others’ business. It’s a stew of problems: torrid affairs, unrequited love, a terminal eating disorder, various cases of mental illness, ungrateful children, callous grandbabies, awful in laws, a couple of suicides, and even a hostage situation. There’s quiet joy, too, in the day to day of their small lives. At the center of it all is Olive Kitteridge, the grumpiest ex school teacher who already hated everyone and lots of things before generations of students wore her down.

A retired middle school math teacher in her seventies, Olive reflects on the life she’s lived in Crosby, Maine with her son and husband. At turns unlikable and endearing, Olive grows on you like a ho hum wine. By the time you decide whether you like her or not, you’re already invested in Olive’s and her distant neighbors’ lives.

VERDICT: Good (It did win the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for fiction). Only downside: there are a JILLION characters, and you’ll need to flip back a bunch of times to remember who’s who.