May 27, 2025
Olive, Again
The tragic news is that my #WinterofStrout is nearly over, and that OLIVE, AGAIN was the last time I got to read an Elizabeth Strout book for the very first time (until whatever she publishes next), and oh my gosh, I loved it. It’s funny because I think reading Strout’s latest book TELL ME EVERYTHING ruined me a bit for my reread of OLIVE KITTERIDGE, leading to me to expect all kinds of things that this book was never going to deliver. But OLIVE, AGAIN is completely a prequel to TELL ME EVERYTHING, a bridge between Olive’s stories and THE BURGESS BOYS and while Lucy Barton doesn’t appear here, I know that Olive will be meeting her soon (and I loved reading about Olive’s friendship with Isabel, whom I met in TELL ME EVERYTHING, and REALLY got to know on my #WinterofStrout when I finally read Strout’s debut, AMY AND ISABELLE).
I also love that I tripped walking up the stairs while holding this book and a mug of turmeric oat milk latte, splattering the top of the book with yellow, the same yellow bursts that are conspicuous throughout the pages of TELL ME EVERYTHING, forsythia and daffodils and everything.
I love the way that Olive grows in this book, or maybe it’s that both she and we get a little bit closer to knowing who she really is. And what she realizes about who she is, which is so different from who she’d been before, is that she really doesn’t know anything at all. “It seemed to her she had never before completely understood how far apart human experience was… She, who always thought that she knew everything that others did not. It just wasn’t true.” It’s a message that I think is so important right now, as so many otherwise kind and thoughtful people dig themselves deeper and deeper into the holes of their convictions.
And the message too that maybe not knowing everything is…fine? A line from the story “Helped,” “‘I think our job—maybe even our duty—is to…bear the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can.”
I always thought that others knew everything I did not; the opposite. Only now, at my “ripe __ age,” I’m realizing that we’re probably all about the same when it comes to what we know and what we think we know and what we think others know. It’s never as much as we think.
I like your statement about kind and thoughtful people digging themselves deeper into the holes of their convictions. That does seem to be what is happening. Around here, even the craziest of the “crazy” will stop to see if you need help, and will take the time to help you, if your vehicle is pulled over to the side of the road. People’s hearts seem to be in the right place when you are face to face with them.
At the same time, some remind me of those people who knock on your door or accost you in the grocery store to spout off about their religious beliefs being so much better than whatever yours are assumed to be. They just can’t keep the “good news” to themselves and will bring it up in every conversation, no matter whether you’re standing in a grocery line-up or waiting to pay your taxes at a municipal office. They can’t climb out of whatever hole they’ve dug themselves into, and they aren’t interested in doing so; they just want to pull you in and be right.