Olive Kittridge by Elizabeth Strout

The word that immediately comes to mind when I think of Olive Kittridge is melancholy...but it's a beautiful kind of melancholy. You know how it is when it's a rainy Saturday in the middle of the summer? When everything is silent and all you can here is the pitter-patter of the raindrops on the roof, on the asphalt outside? That's what this book is like. It's cool breezes and raindrops.

Olive Kittridge is the story of a small town...somewhere...Massachusetts? I have no idea. Somewhere on the East Coast, I know that. So essentially it's a collection of short stories about different members of the community but every short story ties back to Olive. She's one of the members that holds everyone else in the community together - even though individual members of the community appear to not like her very much.

I love the way that Strout told the stories. She told 95% of the stories - she got you to a certain point, told you a certain amount about the characters, and let you get the rest of the way on your own, let you form your own assumptions. I loved that. I loved how much she inspired me to feel and think about the characters she introduced me to.

This book has nothing to do, really, with what happens to the characters throughout their lives - it has everything to do with the characters themselves and how they react to the world around them, and that's why I loved it so much - it was a study in personalities, an exercise in human nature. Don't you love stories like that? When it's like you're a fly on the wall and you learn things about people that you normally wouldn't get to hear?

This isn't one of those books with a happy ending or an unhappy ending, because it's not really a story that ends - it's just about people. How fragile people are, how delicate their egos are. Kind of makes you feel small...I like feeling that way every once in a while.