Olive, Again
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Booker Prize-shortlisted author
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 30 days of Standard free
Buy Now for £11.20
-
Narrated by:
-
Kimberly Farr
-
By:
-
Elizabeth Strout
Summary
Brought to you by Penguin.
THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER FROM THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING, BOOKER-SHORTLISTED AUTHOR
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE 2025
It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer, Lucy Barton, who lives nearby in a house next to the sea. Together, Lucy and Bob talk about their lives, their hopes and regrets, and what might have been.
Lucy, meanwhile, befriends one of Crosby’s longest inhabitants, Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known – “unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them – reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.
Brimming with empathy and pathos, TELL ME EVERYTHING is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.”
'Stunning, deeply felt and profoundly intelligent' Guardian
'A superbly gifted storyteller and a craftswoman in a league of her own' Hilary Mantel
'A terrific writer' Zadie Smith
'Strout’s ability to reveal the wonder in unrecorded lives continues to astonish' Telegraph
OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK: 'A beautiful read reminding us that there is extraordinary love in ordinary actions' Oprah Winfrey
© Elizabeth Strout 2019 (P) Penguin Audio 2019
Critic reviews
"Olive Again" takes Olive further: widowed, into a second marriage with Jack (overweight and not the man he was since his prostate surgery); into old age with all its alone-ness, frustrations and indignities - and a second widowhood. That sounds beyond depressing, but these inter-linked, powerfully charged stories in which characters come and go tug at the heartstrings with such poignancy, such insights - and humour - that we're drawn right in.
These are ordinary characters living ordinary lives but Strout makes them matter, and makes us feel the magnitude of their apparently insignificant disappointments and sadnesses. A grandmother plagues her uninterested visitor with pictures of her grandchildren on her phone, rattling on at length about their cuteness. "Oh I talk too much about them," she gushes. "Yes, you do," replies the visitor and the grandmother's world collapses.
The tragic failures of relationships are explored with infinite subtlety - between Olive and her grown-up son and his hostile step children who stare sullenly; the silent, alienated old couple who have divided their living space with tape. "Tell your father to take you out because I'm not!" says the wife to the dog.
I loved this and the narrator Kimberly Farr's presentation of the dialogue and Olive's thoughts is masterly..
Every-day lives made to matter
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You will love Olive and get weepy at the end
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Poignant
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Stupendous
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Love this book!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.