One of the ways Olive K. is novel-like is the development throughout the book of the main character, Olive Kitteridge. The first chapter, “Pharmacy,” is, as we know, told from Olive’s husband Henry’s perspective. Here’s the first glimpse of Olive herself. “Mousy,” his wife said, when he hired the new girl. “Looks just like a mouse.” Olive is only seen through Henry’s eyes, and the story is largely about Henry’s yearning for the young woman who works for him, a woman who needs

Is Olive K. a dis-continuous narrative in the manner of such modernist works as Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury? So says the Wikipedia entry for the book. (whiny voice: Shameless name-dropping). Discontinuous narrative -- a narrative style in which the narrative moves back and forth through time. A process that is discontinuous happens in stages with intervals between them, rather than continuously. Huh. First, long-time readers will recognize that the title of this post is

‘Kay. A long post today, so let’s begin. No interruptions, please, we can take questions at the end. Last week, we considered the concept of willy wonty and how this structure in a story poses the question: will a protagonist do something or will she/he not. We suggested that other structures may be more successful. “…the most obvious way to create it (tension), is by simply saying something is going to happen, and then putting it off.” “We wonder how and when and why,” (som

The fifth story in Olive, “Starving” begins: “At the marina on Saturday morning, Harmon had to work not to stare at the young couple.” This immediately begs the question, why did Harmon have to work not to stare? What, by implication, was so interesting about the couple? Of course, also, who is Harmon and who is the young couple? The reader might hope the story would answer all these questions. We have some context—because it’s a chapter in Olive Kitteridge, the story will in

First, a personal note. For the first time in some sixty weeks, my blog did not have a new entry last Thursday. Readers were, I know, concerned and despondent. But I had no way to reach all of you because the problem was that our internet router failed. With no internet, we were thrown back into a twilight world of reading books and…talking. Well, things have returned to “normal.” The second chapter of Olive, “Incoming Tide,” presents two themes that occur throughout the book

This week, a new book, Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, published in 2008. Ms. Strout won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Olive, and HBO based a four-part miniseries on the story that appeared in 2014. (Worth watching—a fine adaptation). I first read Olive after seeing the miniseries in 2014 and subsequently read all of Elizabeth Strout’s books. As often happens, it’s hard not to picture the story’s characters represented by the actors in the series—particularly F