Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

After reading several of Elizabeth Strout's other works, I'm so glad I finally got around to Olive Kitteridge. It's almost exactly the same as Anything is Possible, with thirteen short stories that are mostly distinct except that they all mention (or are about) the character of Olive Kitteridge, and they all go so deep into the characters in that you feel like you know them and their deepest thoughts, fears, and secrets. It seems like most of the stories are about old married couples and the anxieties and fears and realities of growing old, and the anxieties and fears and realities of just being human.

Olive Kitteridge, the supposed main character, is not a typical sympathetic character. She is prickly and grumpy and mean, but not in a stereotypical way--just in the way that she doesn't understand a lot of other people and sometimes she is afraid. She is human. She has done a lot of things she regrets, like how she raised her son, but she loves him to death and can't understand where they've gone wrong. She loves her husband but takes him for granted. She loses her temper and gets angry without knowing why. It's so real. You can't help liking her even when she's being irrational and terrible. One of the most poignant scenes in the book is when Olive encounters a girl who is almost dying of anorexia. Olive sits down and cries with her, stroking her hair and helping her figuring out a way out of this. Olive shows more humanity and sympathy and love for someone--this girl who is totally unconnected to her--than she often does to her husband and son. And isn't that like all of us sometimes?

I really love Strout's writing. But it's kind of depressing to see so much into a person (even a fictional person) and to see how much sadness and fear and angst there is, even behind a normal facade. It's also a little scary to see how hard it is to get old. So I love it but it's also kind of depressing. But it's worth reading all the same.

On a related note, I'm going to start trying to read all the Pulitzer and Newbery award winners. It will literally take me years to do this, so it's not like it's a huge goal that I'm going to do to the expense of all my other reading, but I'm going to try to do one a month or something. This is the first Pulitzer I've read since deciding on doing this goal.