Olive Again
By Elizabeth Strout
People complained about February; it was cold and snowy and oftentimes wet and damp and people were ready for spring. But for Cindy the light of the month had always been like a secret, and it remained a secret even now. Because in February the days were really getting longer and you could see it, if you really looked. You could see how at the end of each day the world seemed cracked open and the extra light made its way across the stark trees, and promised. It promised, that light, and what a thing that was…she could see this even now, the gold of the last light opening the world.
In most novels, the protagonist is the very movement of the plot. How that character creates their own problems, then tries to resolve them, is what sweeps us into the narrative and keeps us reading. But in Olive, Again the protagonist Olive Kittridge, is simply the hub, steady, present, observing and responding to the whirlwind of lives around her. I am beginning to think this is how life in my senior years feels. The Christmas letters shift from vignettes about my activites, to commentary about those of my children and granddaughter. It feels like lives around me are in constant motion, and I am the wayside oasis where they stop for a rest, a piece of advice, some comfort or reassurance.
Though Olive seems to be anything BUT the supportive balast in the lives of those around her, with her irritable responses, rough criticism and brusque manner, in this story, we see how she navigates not only her own life, but the many lives she encounters in her seemingly mundane existence as a senior citizen. She is a retired math teacher and her past students are adults now. She has quite a few chance (and not-so-chance) encounters with them.
How Strout creates simple characters with familiar lives, and observes them with a mix of humor and poignant painful suffering is a lesson I want to learn. I laugh out loud when I read about the couple who have divided their living room down the middle with yellow construction tape, each watching heir own television with escalating volume. And at the same time I see the pain and struggle that has pushed them to this solution, the daily irritations and distancing that has left them talking to each other through their daughter.
Each of the characters, from Olive’s view, are met with equal amounts of humor, distain, and compassion, including herself. Dealing with mixed families, ailing neighbors and retiriing professionals, Olive’s is a practial, matter-of-fact comfort. To a young neighbor with a 50/50 diagnosis who asks her if she is afraid to die, Olive says:
Oh, Godfrey, there were days I’d have liked to have been dead. But I’m still scared of dying. You know, Cindy, if you should be dying, if you do die, the truth is—we’re all just a few steps behind you. Twenty minutes behind you and that’s the truth.”
And each story somehow includes a beauty infused in the struggle. Says a woman, puzzling out her relationships with religion:
‘I’ve thought about this a lot. A lot. And here is the well, the phrase I’ve come up with, I mean just for myself, but this is the phrase that goes through my head. I think our job—maybe even our duty—is to—’ her voice became calm, adultlike. ‘to bear the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can.’
The further on I find myself in this journey, the more I know that this is true.