Book of the week

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout (Viking, $35)

As the title suggests, American author Elizabeth Strout’s new novel, Olive, Again features the reappearance of her famed literary heroine, Olive Kitteridge, star of the eponymous 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and 2014 HBO mini-series featuring double Oscar-winning actress Frances McDormand.

Disappointment and deflation can be typical reactions to the announcement of a sequel to a treasured literary work. No such

devastation with Olive, Again. Kitteridge here is the same woman who first emerged in the original titular novel. She’s confrontational, offensive, dysfunctional yet concerned and loving and, ultimately loveable. It’s this heady mix of the infuriating and pragmatic about its heroine which made Olive Kitteridge such a success over a decade ago. The resurrection of these characteristics vitalise its successor, making Strout’s Olive, Again a welcome, down-to-earth summer read.

Like the Olive of old, this latest Kitteridge is battling innumerable demons. Anyone who read the

original will recall it ended with the death of Olive’s husband, Henry, her blossoming romance with hard-ass Republican Jack Kennison and the relationship breakdown with son, Chris, and his wife, Ann.

Olive, Again picks up these plot points, extending them through Olive’s life as she responds to widowhood, her failures as a mother, her son’s failures as a partner and parent, and their recalcitrant behaviours born of similar personalities. In this, the familiar things about reading Olive, Again becomes the reader’s reconnection with all those characters who appeared in the

earlier work, the familiarity of the fact that most of them are still at war with each other, and Olive remains the fraught fulcrum around which all confrontational behaviour rotates.

There is a rather telling scene in the book when mother, son and his wife attempt to reunite. Almost inevitable there is another interruption in this reconciliation, and Olive hears her son and Ann, bickering, use the word ‘‘narcissistic’’.

The term lingers in the reader’s head as they move forward with the book, for its appeal is its broad application to the entire cast in the work.

As with Olive Kitteridge, the nature of family, its functions and dysfunctions are illuminated here. Not the wholesome, affectionate mythical families at the cornerstone of American culture (like the Cunninghams in Happy

Days, the Cosbys and the Waltons), but the disagreeing and disagreeable family of real life.

Where this is a difference between the first book and this latest lies in the structure. Olive Kitteridge was a series of 13 interconnected short stories. Olive, Again though is a fully realised novel. If anything this shift away from short to longer prose benefits the work, allowing Olive to occupy centre-stage in Stroud’s new book. Follow-ups to successful books often fail to reinvigorate the original’s appeal. Not so Strout’s Olive, Again, which is a satisfying, poignant heir of Olive Kitteridge. – Siobhan Harvey

As with Olive Kitteridge, the nature of family, its functions and dysfunctions are illuminated here.