Olive Kitteridge

Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout
read: 2014
Pulitzer Prize

I'd say Olive Kitteridge is most similar to Winesburg, Ohio, of the books I've read. Both are collections of short stories that have some common settings and characters; in the case of Kitteridge, the titular Olive is at least mentioned in every tale. Both capture the zeitgeist of a small town, though Kitteridge is set in coastal Maine rather than Anderson's Midwest. Both also deal with the tragedies and triumphs of normal life rather than earth-shaking events on a global scale.

I wasn't crazy about Winesburg, finding it repetitive, cliched, sentimental, and overly morose. Kitteridge has some of the same flaws, particularly how depressing many of the stories are, but Strout's just such a good writer and hits on unspoken truths of human existence:

You couldn't make yourself stop feeling a certain way, no matter what the other person did. You had to just wait. Eventually the feeling went away because others came along. Or sometimes it didn't go away but got squeezed into something tiny, and hung like a piece of tinsel in the back of your mind.

Kitteridge is dripping with these kinds of poetic observations of modern tragedy. Offsetting the heartbreak is Olive, whose blunt matter-of-factness often serves a humorous counterpoint to the weighty themes.

The Shining

The Shining
by Stephen King
read: 2014
Guardian 1000 Novels

This is only the second Stephen King novel I've read (after It), and something that struck me about both books is how he uses contrast. Describing horror, fear, depravity, and evil is obviously integral to the horror novel, but King spends just as much time showing goodness, bravery, altruism, and generosity. The touching relationship between Danny and his father Jack makes Jack's corruption, possession, and destruction all the more tragic. Dick's bravery in risking his life to save Danny, and the willingness to help of the various people he encounters, makes the story inspiring. The novel is called The Shining, and the shining itself is almost the hero of the story, set in opposition to the evil force of the hotel itself.

The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood
read: 2014
Guardian 1000 Novels

When I was younger I read a lot of fantasy / science fiction novels, and I often enjoyed the world the author created but wanted to see it from the perspective of a "normal" person in it, rather than someone caught up in trying to save the universe. I wish I'd been turned on to Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid's Tale takes place in a dystopian future where women have been largely stripped of their rights. The protagonist isn't the leader of the resistance; she's just an ordinary woman whose role in the new society is to have rich men's babies.

As in The Blind Assassin, it's not to clear to whom the narrator is writing the story. We know that she is basically a prisoner in the Commander's house and has no access to writing utensils or paper, or anywhere to store a manuscript even if she could write it. Periodically she shows awareness that's she's narrating, saying "I would like to believe this is a story I'm telling" or "This is a reconstruction." Later she seems to address the tale to her husband Luke, expressing concern for the audience's perception of her when she has an affair. In the epilogue, which serves a frame story, it's suggested that The Handmaid's Tale is transcribed from taped records made at some point in the process of the narrator attempting to escape.

The frame story shines a spotlight on the "normal" person perspective I highlighted above. The tapes were found decades after the narrator's struggle, and we learn that the patriarchal society has collapsed. But we never learn what happened to "Offred," or even what her real identity was. Even though we know that the horrible oppression has stopped, the narrator's fate still matters. It's easy to look at history's global impact, but events affect individuals, too, and we can forget that. The Handmaid's Tale reminds us.