TBR Pile Challenge – Page 2 – What Cathy Read Next…

About the Book

At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.

As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life – sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty. Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition – its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires.

Format: eBook, paperback (270 pp.) Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 4^th July 2008 Genre: Literary Fiction, Short Story

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

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My Review

Olive Kitteridge was my read for this month’s theme of The BookBum Club – New Year, New Author. Although I have several books by Elizabeth Strout on my bookshelves (real and virtual), I’d never actually read one so this was a great opportunity to rectify that omission. The book is also on my TBR Pile Challenge list which was an extra motivation for selecting it.

The book is subtitled A Novel in Stories and in some of the stories, Olive is the main character but in others she has the equivalent of a walk-on part. At first, Olive comes across as direct, bordering on unpleasant, but gradually the reader gets a sense that in fact she is remarkably astute; she just has no time for people who try to put on an act. ‘He is like her that way, can’t stand the blah-blah-blah.’ Olive also shows herself to be sensitive to other’s moods and needs. In ‘Starving’, Olive’s encounter with a distraught girl produces ‘a kind of warm electricity, something astonishing and unworldly in the feeling of the room’.

As the book progresses, we learn of the many tragedies, challenges and disappointments in Olive’s life – truly she ‘has lived through her own sorrows’ – and I found myself sympathising with her simple desire to be a valued part of her son’s life and admiring her loyalty and devotion ‘in sickness and in health’ to her husband, Henry. Looking back, Olive regrets not celebrating the small moments of happiness that occur in life – a walk in the crisp autumn air, holding hands with her husband, Henry. ‘Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful? Most likely not. People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it.’ A message for us all there.

I found some of the stories bleak, many thought-provoking, others heart-warming and hopeful. In every case, I felt as though I was reading about real people. I came to know their habits, their likes and dislikes. I could also imagine myself on the streets of Crosby. This ability to create realistic characters and an authentic sense of place is the author’s real achievement, I think.

In my edition, the last story was ‘The Burgess Boys’, which is the title of another book by Elizabeth Strout. This confused me a bit because it didn’t feature Olive at all so I can only assume it was intended to be an introduction to this later novel. The penultimate story, ‘River’, certainly seems a more fitting and satisfying conclusion to the novel. From feeling quite ambivalent about Olive after the first few chapters, I grew to understand her, admire her and, by the end of the book, feel a real affection for her. Olive is a survivor and for me the lasting message of the book is the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. May we all share this feeling: ‘Olive felt something she had not expected to feel again: a sudden surging greediness for life.’

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In three words: Intimate, acutely-observed, insightful

Try something similar…Dance of the Happy Shades by Alice Munro (click here to read my review)

About the Author

Elizabeth Strout is the author of several novels, including: Abide with Me, a national bestseller and BookSense pick, and Amy and Isabelle, which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in England. In 2009 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her book Olive Kitteridge. Her short stories have been published in a number of magazines, including The New Yorker. She teaches at the Master of Fine Arts program at Queens University of Charlotte.

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TBR Challenge 2018

About the Book

Therese is just an ordinary sales assistant working in a New York department store when a beautiful, alluring woman in her thirties walks up to her counter. Standing there, Therese is wholly unprepared for the first shock of love. Therese is an awkward nineteen-year-old with a job she hates and a boyfriend she doesn’t love; Carol is a sophisticated, bored suburban housewife in the throes of a divorce and a custody battle for her only daughter. As Therese becomes irresistibly drawn into Carol’s world, she soon realises how much they both stand to lose…

Format: Paperback (312 pp.) Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2015 [1952] Genre: Literary Fiction, Romance

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Carol on Goodreads

My Review

Carol was first published under the pseudonym Clare Morgan in 1952 with the title The Price of Salt. In the book’s afterword, Patricia Highsmith, writing in 1989, explains the story’s real life inspiration: a woman wearing a fur coat she glimpsed whilst working in the toy section of a New York department store shortly before Christmas in 1948. She writes: ‘Perhaps I noticed her because she was alone, or because a mink coat was a rarity, and because she was blondish and seemed to give off light.’ Highsmith recounts how she was left feeling ‘odd and swimmy in the head, near to fainting, yet at the same time uplifted, as if I had seen a vision.’

From the germ of this idea was born The Price of Salt, published under a pseudonym because by that time Strangers on a Train had been published to great success and Highsmith was now considered a ‘suspense’ writer. Her publishers wanted more of the same and The Price of Salt was anything but. As it happens, The Price of Salt did turn out to be a commercial success, selling nearly one million copies when it was published in paperback in 1953. And so the story of Carol…

Raised in a children’s home following a difficult upbringing, Therese has ambitions to be a stage designer. Finding it hard to obtain openings in that profession, she reluctantly takes a job in a department store for the Christmas period. It makes her feel trapped and she fears a future like some of the worn out, drab women she sees around her: ‘…She knew it was the hopelessness that terrified her…the hopelessness of herself, of ever being the person she wanted to be and doing the things that person would do.’ Therese’s disillusion with her job is equalled by her dissatisfaction with her relationship with her boyfriend, Richard. She finds she cannot return Richard’s love or relish the future together for which he hopes so fervently. ‘She was cold, and felt rather miserable in general. It was the half dangling, half cemented relationship with Richard, she knew. They saw more and more of each other without growing closer.’

Therese’s first glimpse of Carol in the department store is life-changing; it awakens an overwhelming but quite unexpected attraction to this cool, stylish, beautiful woman. When Therese initiates contact, it becomes apparent that the attraction is mutual and the two embark on a relationship that will become all-consuming and have consequences for them both. For Therese, the relationship with Carol brings a sense of freedom and adventure. As time goes on, it also seems to bring about a new maturity in Therese. For Carol, a woman going through a divorce and custody battle, the relationship means agonising choices. For them both, it means the opprobrium of society. ‘In the eyes of the world it’s an abomination.’

It is difficult now for most of us to imagine the prejudice two women in such a relationship faced. However, as Highsmith reminds us in the afterword, those were the days when ‘gay bars were a dark door somewhere in Manhattan, where people wanting to go to a certain bar got off the subway a station before or after the convenient one, lest they be suspected of being homosexual.’

The story is told from the point of view of Therese so Carol always remains something of an enigma, slightly distant and often unreadable. So, like Therese, the reader, is left to try to interpret the extent of Carol’s feelings for Therese from her actions and her often opaque comments and unexplained moods. Therese wonders, ‘Was life, were human relationships always like this… Never solid ground underfoot’. At times, it feels as if Carol is afraid of the intensity of Therese’s feelings for her, of what loving her might mean for Therese. Unspoken thoughts, not being able to say the right words are something of a theme of the book. ‘She [Therese] did not want to talk. Yet she felt there were thousands of words choking her throat.’

In her foreword to my edition, the Val McDermid writes: ‘Some books change lives. This is one of them.’ She describes how Carol, the story of a lesbian relationship, didn’t so much fill a niche as ‘a gaping void’. It may well have been groundbreaking at the time but, in the end, Carol is simply the tender, emotional, passionate story of two people exploring the attraction they feel for each other. I found it a wonderful book and the ending simply beautiful.

Carol is part of my TBR Pile Challenge and one of the books on my Classics Club list. It also forms part of my From Page to Screen reading project. I will be posting my thoughts on the comparison between the book and the film (starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara) in due course.

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In three words: Passionate, stylish, intimate

About the Author

Patricia Highsmith was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921. Her parents moved to New York when she was six, and she attended Julia Richmond high School and Barnard College. In her senior year she edited the college magazine, having decided at the age of sixteen to become a writer. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, was made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. The Talented Mr Ripley, published in 1955, was awarded the Edgar Allen Poe Scroll by the Mystery Writers of America and introduced the fascinating anti-hero Tom Ripley, who was to appear in many of her later crime novels.

Patricia Highsmith died in Locarno, Switzerland, on 4 February 1995. Her last novel, Small g: A Summer Idyll, was published posthumously a month later.

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The Classics Club TBR Challenge 2018 From Page to Screen