(Simon & Schuster Pocket Book, $27)
I think I have found my favourite bookstore. It’s in a two-storey clapboard building on the main street of a tiny town in northern California called oendocino. From inside the store by the cash register, you can look out the windows and across the street to an open field and the Pacific ocean.
The Ginger and I were at the beginning of a five-week trip in the US when I discovered this store and my bag was already heavy enough with three guide books, two novels and a book on the American Civil War but I could not resist buying one more.
I chose olive Kitteridge because it looked and sounded thoroughly American and because it had “Winner of the Pulitzer Prize” on the cover. It turned out to be a great choice.
The olive Kitteridge of the title is a fat, grumpy schoolteacher living in small town oaine. She’s dismissive of her husband, hard on her son and not wildly popular with her students. Hardly heroine material, I’ll grant you that, but the real heroine is the author for presenting this complicated character in eclectic detail via a linked collection of short stories all showcasing olive from different perspectives.
By the end of it, you may not love her but you will understand her. Grumpy people are humans too after all! They’ve loved and lost and laughed just like the Pollyannas (okay, maybe they haven’t laughed quite as much). And there is a side to olive that allows her to see the trouble other people are in and, if she’s in the mood, to help them – if not herself.
A great character, brilliantly portrayed in a unique style: I can see why olive Kitteridge won the Pulitzer. Better still, this is a book I can happily hand on to the Ginger and know he will love it as much as I did – and that’s not just because I want him to carry it.
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