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Olive again book review6/29/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Even though everyone knows everyone else’s business, murder, paedophilia, suicide, armed robbery, arson and hostage-taking all take place in Crosby, and so do heartbreak and true love. It’s not only that this small town is the setting for high drama. Within these taut, laconic little tales, there is room for characters to show feeling from several levels of their being It’s just a place, as Betty’s life (two disastrous marriages, brain-damaged son, dire poverty) is “just a life”, but Strout persuades us that Crosby matters, and so do its people. The town of Crosby, Maine, in which Elizabeth Strout set her acclaimed story-sequence-cum-novel Olive Kitteridge and now sets this sequel, Olive, Again, lies on a beautiful stretch of coast it is remote, provincial, very far from centres of power or fashion or big business. ![]() She hands her a Kleenex and asks about her life. But when one day Betty shows up crying over the death of the headteacher on whom she had a crush, back when Olive was teaching her maths in high school, Olive softens. She really, really dislikes her for having dropped the cigarette butt that caused Olive to bend over, get dizzy and fall and subsequently decide she’d better move into sheltered housing. She dislikes her for her Republican bumper sticker. ![]() She dislikes Betty for the hostility with which she treats the other carer, a Somali woman. O live Kitteridge doesn’t much like Betty, the “nursing aide” assigned to her after her heart attack. ![]()
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