Elizabeth Strout

Loved Olive Kitteridge. The book and the TV series.
Just finished Abide With Me.
I am now reading The Burgess Boys. 

Perfect airplane, packing, distracting novels for my life right now.

Here's what Strout says in her Reader's Guide to the Trade Paperback edition of Abide With Me.  Something to remember, for sure.


"A book, once finished, belongs to the reader, and each reader will bring to it his or her own life's experiences... it should be a different book for each person who reads it."

And this.

"Through the telling of stories and the reading of stories, we have a chance to see something about ourselves and others that maybe we knew, but didn't know we knew. We can wonder for a moment if, for all our separate histories, we are not more alike than different after all."

 Perfect, right? 

And guess what- she has a new book, coming January, 2016. Can't wait!

Olive Kitteridge, at last

How could I have missed this book? Actually, the truth is, I didn't. I bought a paperback copy after hearing all my reading friends rave. But the print font was so darn tiny! It sat, neglected, by my bedside for many weeks. Then I needed a book to take along on an airplane trip and eyesight be damned! Olive Kitteridge it was.

And I loved everything about it. Now I'm foisting it on all my friends. My houseguest, Julie, stranded here when they closed the Baltimore airport, read it in two sittings. When my college pals gathered in Atlanta, all had our own strong opinions on The Help and shared them. We decided we needed another book, equally discussable. Olive Kitteridge got the nod.

I've been thinking a lot about believable heroines. Main characters you relate to from the beginning chapters of a novel. Even unappealing characters, if given a redeeming quality, can become someone who makes you continue to turn pages. Blake Snyder talks about this in Save the Cat!, his book on writing. A "save the cat" moment occurs when even the most unlikable point-of-view character does something to redeem himself, to make herself sympathetic to readers. I think Olive might be a bit like that. Elizabeth Strout does a terrific job of making Olive appealing despite her obvious foibles. At first, she's not particularly likable. But she displays humanity and vulnerability. So despite her being occasionally bothersome, frequently grumpy, way too opinionated, Olive has small moments of kindness and vulnerability, and we like her. Or, at least, are drawn to her.

Every time a friend comments on the book, she starts with the wedding chapter. Poor Olive Kitteridge! Dressed in that horrid mother-of-the-groom get-up. Hiding in a bedroom, eavesdropping, overcome, a true case of the vapors (were she Southern).

The book takes form in non-linear chapters,narratives linked by one character. Almost short stories, actually. In each chapter, we see another side of Olive. All the same character, ever changing. Just a really good book. And here's a link to a terrific NPR interview with the author, which includes a bit of the book read by the writer.
(Here's his description of Olive:
Strout’s big, blunt heroine and the book’s namesake, Olive Kitteridge, is tough, wounded, wounding. Big blunt heroine! How true.)


Related post: Save the Cat!

Escape from Snowmageddon

I took a blogging break this weekend to play with my friend Julie, a visitor from The North. We had great fun listening to The Help (terrific recording!) and talking about Olive Kitteridge (which we both adored). Although Julie's very good at prodding my writing along, this time we mostly focused on The Weather. When they cancelled her return flight to Baltimore, I got to keep her for an extra day or two. We shopped, walked in the sunshine, ate, and watched Emma on TV.

(Thanks, Kate and Carl, for the pictures!)



Here's what she escaped.
(Her street in Baltimore County.)












And this is my daughter's street in Bethesda... Had the plow arrived yet? She says not until Monday night. (Actually, this is a nearby street. Hers is still unplowed, deep, undrivable...)





Neither rain, nor sleet, nor... HA!

(No mail for a while, I guess.)At least the sun's shining?



Almost 30 inches? Maybe I'll get Julie until April! Lots of books yet to read and talk about.

(What she's recommending I read next: REMARKABLE CREATURES.
Here's what I'm recommending she read next: the Jackson Brodie trilogy by Kate Atkinson.)

Delta Ties

Here's another book on my "must read" shelf. Olive Kitteridge just won a Pulitzer for fiction. And our local newspaper, The St. Petersburg Times, won two! 

And while I'm claiming six degrees of separation-Have I mentioned that "my people" are from that part of Mississippi where everybody knows everybody. Actually, the whole state is mostly like that. But we also love to claim kin to anybody with a tie to The Delta. So here goes, from Delta News Online, which magically appeared on my Facebook page:

2 Pulitzer Prize Winners with Delta Ties!!

 

NEWSWEEK Editor Jon Meacham won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography for "American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House."

His wife is Keith Smythe,formerly of Tribbett.

Atlanta Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal, Douglas A. Blackmon, won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction: 
"Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from 
the Civil War to World War II" 
Mr. Blackmon is formerly of Leland.
Congratulations to these Pulitzer Prize Winners!