Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout

Elizabeth Strout is a wise and talented writer. This truth is reinforced in Olive, Again, her seventh novel. In these thirteen interconnected stories, Strout reveals a keen insight into the human condition. These stories are a meditation about people who are unclear about who they are and why they made the choices they did.

This book is a sequel to Strout’s 2008 Pulitzer-Prize winning novel Olive Kittredge. In that novel, Olive was stubborn, bossy and not the least bit reflective. Like a kaleidoscope, the book showed readers Olive’s many selves. We saw Olive’s shifting emotions and actions in her role as mother, wife, teacher and neighbor. And though we didn’t always like what we saw, Strout highlighted the many selves that dwell in a person. Twenty years later, Olive is still cantankerous, opinionated, and self-involved, but she has softened. Her narcissism has given way to humility as she begins to question what it might feel like - to be another person. In her eighth decade, Olive’s revelation is poignant because she knows her time on earth is coming to an end. 

Olive still resides in the small town of Crosby, Maine. After her husband Henry died, she married Jack Kennison, a former Harvard professor who also harbors regret about several of his decisions. Olive and Jack wrestle with their diminishing physical capabilities and imminent decline. They struggle to make sense of the relationships in their lives. Olive wonders why she was mean to her first husband Henry and why she feels such distance from her son Christopher. Jack wonders why he had an affair when he loved his wife, Betsy. He, too, is estranged from his only child, Cassie, who lives in San Francisco.  

When Olive’s son Christopher, his wife Ann and their four children visit Olive, their time together is not easy. There is misunderstandings and miscommunication. Belatedly, Olive has begun to contemplate the small choices and big decisions that shaped her life. She realizes her frayed relationships might derive from her actions and not solely the deficiencies in Christopher and Ann. “She could not understand what it was about her, but it was about her that had caused this to happen. And it had to have been there for years, maybe all of her life, how would she know. As she sat across from Jack -stunned – she felt as though she had lived her life as though blind.” 

One night, Jack and Olive are at a restaurant and the woman with whom Jack had an affair walks by their table. They speak and Jack is shaken. “What frightened him was how much of his life he had lived without knowing who he was or what he was doing. … He senses that he had lived his life in a way that he had not known. This meant there had been a large blindspot directly in front of his eyes. It meant that he did not understand, not really at all, how others had perceived him. And it meant that he did not know how to perceive himself.” 

Olive and Jack seem to lack an understanding of their current selves or the factors that shaped their personalities. Olive does know that her father’s suicide affected her, but that tragedy was never processed. Now as they reach the end of their lives, Olive and Jack feel distressed about what their lives meant and how they chose to live. Could they have changed themselves in a significant way? Maybe. Maybe not. But awareness might have led to them to more intentional lives.  

Melancholy hovers around the characters. Loneliness haunts every story Some readers might say the novel is dark. It is hard to read about regret and remorse. But I believe Elizabeth Strout’s beautiful book is a gift, a wake-up call to us all. She is warning readers that even though self-awareness is hard, we don’t have to live with so little understanding of ourselves. We can reflect on how our behavior affects not just those who we love, but everyone we encounter.