Olive Kitteridge

Never Done: Finished Olive Kitteridge

Josh has been wanting me to read the Nobel Prize-winning novel Soul Mountain for about 6 years now, and I finally brought it with me on vacation, determined to read it. I had tried once before, and found it dense and difficult, with more description and inner narrative than I usually like, and so I eventually put it down. Apparently there is an image on the very last page that he hoped I would get to, because he adored it. I suggested I just read the last page, but he found that unbearable to think about, and I, out of respect, actually didn't go reds the back page, even though it would have been in my nature to do so. Finally, after a realization I had that if I want to read the last page first, for any reason, it's a completely valid approach, I told Josh that I wanted him to tell me what is on the last page. And he did, and it's an image of god. God as a frog, with one eye always open and one eye constantly blinking. A beautiful image, for sure, and probably the best image of God I have ever heard, which is a lot coming from an atheist like me. So, as I said, I packed the book on vacation, and I started it on the way to the airport. I read the Forward, which I had not read the first time, and I understood why it is so inward and metaphoric (it has to do with the author Gao Xingjian's experience coming out of the Cultural Revolution.) I was also extremely moved by his writing story -- he destroyed hundreds of stories, essays, plays, and poems, and still went on to amazing prolificity. I know that's not a word, but he was incredibly prolific.

So I had the book with me, but as soon as I got to the airport and saw a book store, I lost my resolve to read Nobel Prize-winning Chinese fiction, and was seduced by the Pulitzer Prize-winning American fiction. I bought myself a copy of Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge, and became immediately engrossed in the tales from the fictional small coastal town of Crosby, Maine. It reminded me of when I was young and moved to Maine, and it reminded me of when I got older and visited Maine, and it reminded me of my friends who live there now, and it reminded me of what I think about when I think about living there again. It was foggy and slow, and old timers lived alongside newcomers, sometimes with grace and delight, and sometimes with a gulf of misunderstanding. When I lived there in the late 1980's, my mother used to say, "Jenny doesn't live in Maine; she lives in alternative Maine." She was partly right (I did live in a yurt on five acres of land that we rented for $50/month, and I did work at an art house movie theater, and belong to a food coop, and spend time on womyn's land) but the part she missed is the part where my neighbors and I shoveled each other out, and I worked at Family Planning and helped women of all types and ages with their reproductive health, and we all walked on the same trails, and swam in the same lakes, and ate at the same diners. So when I read in Olive Kitteridge that when Harmon first sees Nina, the anorexic girl whose boyfriend steals tubing from his hardware store to make a bong, and his reaction is that he loves young people, I smiled at how right Strout got it, and that in her dark, sad book in which people struggle with change, she offered this vision of hope.