Olive Kitteridge is a 2008 novel by Elizabeth Strout.
It has been described as a "novel in stories". The book consists of thirteen stories set in the fictional coastal town of Crosby, Maine. The central character is Olive Kitteridge, a retired math teacher in her early seventies. Olive is cranky, irascible, blunt, and can sometimes be downright obnoxious. She browbeats her mild-mannered husband Henry, and her volcanic moods alienate her only son, Christopher. But she can also be a fierce friend and can be strongly empathetic.
Many of the thirteen stories focus on Olive, such as "A Little Burst" where Olive takes a strong dislike to Christopher's new wife, or "A Different Road" in which Olive and Henry are taken hostage when two drug addicts rob a hospital they are visiting. Others mention her only tangentially, like "Criminal" in which a frustrated housewife remembers Olive as being the scariest teacher in school, or "The Piano Player" in which the eponymous piano player, a Lady Drunk, sees Henry Kitteridge come into the nightclub where she performs.
Adapted into an HBO miniseries, Olive Kitteridge, with Frances McDormand as Olive. Strout later wrote a sequel, 2019 novel Olive, Again.
Tropes:
- Bring My Brown Pants: Played for Drama, as Henry wets himself with terror as he and Olive are held at gunpoint by drug thieves in "A Different Road".
- The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: Kevin from "Incoming Tide" is so depressed and lonely that he has come back to his hometown of Crosby to kill himself. He has a degree in psychiatry.
- Dead Sparks: Harmon and Bonnie, a married couple in late middle age in "Starving". They don't really like each other any more, and eventually Bonnie tells him that she is finished with sex and never wants to have relations with him again.
- December–December Romance: The book ends on a hopeful note in "River", when Olive finds herself in a new romance with Jack Kennison, a retired professor who also lost a spouse.
- Direct Line to the Author: The novel was published with an afterword in the form of a conversation between a Random House interviewer, author Elizabeth Strout...and Olive Kitteridge. Olive does not think much of Strout's book.
- Elder Abuse: Someone at the nursing home in "The Piano Player" is pinching Angela's mother so hard that her arms have bruises. It's implied that Angela, who resents her mother both for being an alcoholic prostitute and for ruining her chance of going to music school, did it herself.
- Flashback: Most of "A Different Road" is told in flashback, as Olive, driving past the hospital, remembers how she and Henry (and a doctor and nurse) were held hostage there by two gun-wielding drug addicts looking for pills.
- Guilt Complex: In "Pharmacy", Henry observes how his assistant Denise can't trust her new happiness, and attributes it to her "Catholic guilt."
- Happily Failed Suicide: In "Incoming Tide" Kevin's resolve to kill himself is derailed when he sees an old schoolmate, Patty Howe, about to drown in the tide after she slipped and fell in. As he's fishing her out of the water, he's amazed by her will to live, and finds it a life-affirming moment.
- Hostage Situation: In "A Different Road" Olive and Henry visit a hospital, and have the bad luck to be held hostage by two drug addicts looking for pills.
- Lady Drunk: Angela from "The Piano Player" is a sad alcoholic who has to get drunk before playing for an audience, and who is so drunk after her performance that she has to sit down in the stairwell when she gets home.
- Left Hanging: Some stories are left with the plot dangling. In "Starving" Harold decides to end his loveless marriage to Bonnie and move in with his lover Daisy, but it's unresolved whether he actually does it. In "Ship in a Bottle", Julie runs away from home to be with her afraid-of-marriage boyfriend Bruce, but whether or not they do wind up together is also unresolved.
- Meet Cute: "A Little Burst" recounts how Christopher met his wife Suzanne: he's a podiatrist, and she had to come to his office after she got a blister from an ill-fitting pair of shoes.
- Missing Mom: In the backstory to "Criminal", Rebecca's mother abandoned her as a child, lit out to California, joined Scientology, and disappeared.
- Old Flame Fizzle: In "The Piano Player" Angela is surprised when her old boyfriend from decades ago, Simon, comes to the restaurant. Not only does the flame fizzle, but it turns out that Simon is bitter and resentful, and tells her about how her mother tried to have sex with him.
- The Piano Player: Mostly averted in "The Piano Player", where Angela is not a background character but the protagonist of the story. She's led a disappointing life with some demeaning affairs, and she's a Lady Drunk who needs to get a buzz on before she can play at the restaurant.
- Pyromaniac: In "Criminal", Rebecca, a repressed housewife who has a whole lot of buried anger and mental issues, has an unhealthy habit of burning paper in her sink just to watch the flame. At the end of the story she takes off with matches and lighter fluid, apparently to her unsympathetic doctor's office, to start a fire.
- Right Through the Wall: In "The Piano Player", Angela has traumatic childhood memories of hearing her mother, a prostitute, having sex with men in their home.
- Runaway Bride: Gender-flipped in "Ship in a Bottle" when Julie Harwood's boyfriend Bruce chickens out on their wedding day. While Runaway Grooms are usually unsympathetic, in this story Bruce seems largely justified in bailing on the marriage out of fear of Julie's neurotic, unstable mother Anita.
- Self-Harm: In "Incoming Tide" Kevin remembers his erratic, disturbed girlfriend Clara, who sliced up her arms with razor blades.
- Slice of Life: A series of short stories about the trials and tribulations of Olive Kitteridge and the other residents of Crosby, ME.
- Unresolved Sexual Tension:
- "Pharmacy" has Henry eventually realizing that he's in love with Denise, his assistant at the pharmacy. They're both married so nothing comes of it.
- In "Security" Olive remembers her infatuation with Jim O'Casey, a coworker at her school. They were mad about each other and talked about running away together, but nothing ever came of it, possibly because of Jim's death in a car accident.
