Olive, Again

Labor

Two days earlier, Olive Kitteridge had delivered a baby.

She had delivered the baby in the backseat of her car; her car had been parked on the front lawn of Marlene Bonney s house. Marlene was having a baby shower for her daughter, and Olive had not wanted to park behind the other cars lined up on the dirt road. She had been afraid that someone might park behind her and she wouldn t be able to get out; Olive liked to get out. So she had parked her car on the front lawn of the house, and a good thing she had, that foolish girl her name was Ashley and she had bright blond hair, she was a friend of Marlene s daughter had gone into labor, and Olive knew it before anyone else did; they were all sitting around the living room on folding chairs and she had seen Ashley, who sat next to her, and who was enormously pregnant, wearing a red stretch top to accentuate this pregnancy, leave the room, and Olive just knew.

She d gotten up and found the girl in the kitchen, leaning over the sink, saying, Oh God, oh God, and Olive had said to her, You re in labor, and the idiot child had said, I think I am. But I m not due for another week.

Stupid child.

And a stupid baby shower. Olive, thinking of this as she sat in her own living room, looking out over the water, could not, even now, believe what a stupid baby shower that had been. She said out loud, Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. And then she got up and went into her kitchen and sat down there. God, she said.

She rocked her foot up and down.

The big wristwatch of her dead husband, Henry, which she wore, and had worn since his stroke four years ago, said it was four o clock. All right then, she said. And she got her jacket it was June, but not warm today and her big black handbag and she went and got into her car which had that gunky stuff still left on the backseat from that foolish girl, although Olive had tried to clean it as best she could and she drove to Libby s, where she bought a lobster

Elizabeth Strout is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Olive Kitteridge, winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Olive, Again, an Oprah s Book Club pick; Anything Is Possible, winner of the Story Prize; My Name is Lucy Barton, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize; The Burgess Boys, named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post and NPR; Abide with Me, a national bestseller; and Amy and Isabelle, winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the International Dublin Literary Award, and the Orange Prize. Her short stories have been published in a number of magazines, including The New Yorker and O: The Oprah Magazine. Elizabeth Strout lives in New York City.

In the first chapter of Elizabeth Strout s Olive, Again . . . the man who will become Olive s second husband writes, Dear Olive Kitteridge, I have missed you and if you would see fit to call me or email me or see me, I would like that very much. Jack Kennison might be speaking for fans of Strout s Pulitzer Prize winning Olive Kitteridge, which inspired an Emmy-winning HBO mini-series and now this sequel. However, like its iconic heroine, this book is capable of standing alone. . . . [Olive] is as indelible as the ink on Jack Kennison s paper. If you know Olive, you know how she would respond to the hoopla: with an eye roll and an Oh Godfrey. It s good to have her back. Elisabeth Egan, The New York Times Book Review

Strout dwells with uncanny immediacy inside the minds and hearts of a dazzling range of ages: the young (with their confusion, wonder, awakening sexuality), the middle-aged (envy, striving, compromise), the old (failing bodies, societal shunning, late revelations). . . . I have long and deeply admired all of Strout s work, but Olive, Again transcends and triumphs. The naked pain, dignity, wit and courage these stories consistently embody fill us with a steady, wrought comfort. The Washington Post

In thirteen poignant interconnected stories, Strout follows the cantankerous, truth-telling Mainer as she ages, experiencing a joyful second marriage and the evolution of her difficult relationship with her son. In her blunt yet compassionate way, Olive grapples with loneliness, infidelity, mortality and the question of whether we can ever really know someone ourselves included. People (Book of the Week)

A magnificent achievement on its own terms . . . We see Olive acquiring a view of herself, and coming to recognize as valuable the other people who grant that vision. In the process, she shares in the alchemy that she continues to perform for us and elicits our unexpected, abiding love.