Blogger Book Club – Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

This month’s Blogger Book Club selection is Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. Thanks to Kay from The Best of Intentions for hosting this link-up!

This book is a collection of stories about various people who live in small town Maine. Olive, a thoroughly disagreeable and unlikeable retired math teacher, pops in and out of the stories – sometimes as a peripheral character, sometimes more central, but she’s always there.
I generally like these kinds of books. I’m a huge fan of Maeve Binchy, for example. Not a lot of action, but you really get to know the characters and how their lives intertwine. Olive Kitteridge is the same sort of format, except that their lives are completely devoid of any sort of joy. It’s like a big rain cloud follows these characters where ever they go.

While waiting for Olive Kitteridge to become available from the library, I read two other books by Elizabeth Strout. All three books have the same themes- everyday people living their everyday lives in small towns in Maine.

The Burgess Boys – I didn’t hate this book, but I didn’t like it, either. There was not a single sympathetic character. In fact, if I knew any of these characters in real life, I’d steer well clear of them.

Amy and Isabelle – this book was kind of painful to read. The awkwardness of the title characters made me cringe a few times.

Now it may seem as if I’m panning these books and the author, but I’m not. They’re beautifully written and I was pulled into these bleak novels immediately. It’s just that the characters seem a little bit too real, with all their negative traits – selfish/clumsy/graceless/vulnerable. It touches a nerve with me so that makes me uncomfortable. I will definitely read other books by this author, but I need something a little bit lighter, sort of a palate-cleanser, in between because these novels are grim and there are no happy endings.