How long is it?
336 pages in the Random House Trade Paperbacks 2008 paperback edition.
Fiction · Short Stories · Literary Fiction · Literary fiction
Olive Kitteridge
Highly regardedPulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2009Reading facts
✓ Checked- Reading effort
- 49 / 100Moderate
- Length
- 336 pagesRandom House Trade Paperbacks · 2008
- Reading time
- 6 h 45 minat 50 pages an hour ·
- Pace
- Measured
- Emotional intensity
- 4 / 5
About 6 h 45 min · at 30 minutes a day, about 14 days
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
About the book
Retired mathematics teacher Olive Kitteridge lives in the coastal town of Crosby, Maine, where her sharp judgments spare few neighbors and often miss what her own family needs. Her gentle husband Henry, a pharmacist, and their adult son struggle with her demands, while a local musician carries memories of an old romance and a former pupil considers suicide. Thirteen linked stories follow these intersecting lives across the years, sometimes keeping Olive close and sometimes catching only a glimpse of her.
Reader notes
The storytelling is episodic and intimate, alternating uncomfortable humor with sadness. Its changing viewpoints complicate first impressions, and suicidal despair is a serious recurring subject beneath the ordinary routines of small-town life.
How it reads
- Writing style
- Direct · Lyrical · Spare
- Tone
- Intimate · Melancholic · Reflective · Wistful
- Structure
- Episodic · Linked collection
- Collection
- Episodic · Linked
- Driven by
- Atmosphere · Character · Relationships
- Point of view
- Multiple viewpoints · Third person, limited
- Setting
- Crosby, Maine
Reading complexity
- Writing
- 3 / 5
- Ideas
- 3 / 5
- Structure
- 4 / 5
- Background knowledge
- 1 / 5
About this profile
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
- Writing
- How much attention the sentences and language require.
- Ideas
- How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
- Structure
- How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
- Background knowledge
- Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
- Emotional intensity
- Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.
Themes
- Aging
- Community
- Family
- Grief
- Isolation
- Marriage
Content notes
- Violence
- Mild
- Sexual content
- Mild
- Swearing
- Mild
- Substance use
- Mild
- Abuse
- Mild
- Self-harm or suicide
- Strong
Standing and awards
Highly regarded
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2009
- National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, 2008
Series and reading order
Olive Kitteridge
- 1Olive Kitteridge · This book · 2008
Questions readers ask
Which edition is shown here?
Random House Trade Paperbacks · 2008 · Paperback. ISBN 9780812971835.
What is the order of books in Olive Kitteridge?
1. Olive Kitteridge.
How long does it take to read Olive Kitteridge?
About 6 hours 45 minutes at 50 pages an hour, based on the 336-page Random House Trade Paperbacks edition. Dense books can take longer.
About the author
Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth Strout writes literary fiction built from close characterization, spare prose, and the slow revision of judgments. Her novels and linked stories often follow families and small communities over long stretches of time, allowing a person glimpsed at the edge of one life to become central in another. In Olive Kitteridge and Olive Again, the abrasive Maine schoolteacher moves in and out of thirteen-story cycles. Each change of viewpoint complicates her bluntness by setting it against marriage, aging, estrangement, illness, and the guarded needs of her neighbors. Anything Is Possible uses a similar communal structure in rural Illinois, tracing old shame and unmet affection through intersecting households. The Lucy Barton books turn toward a more conversational, reflective mode. In Oh William!, Lucy revisits a former marriage while helping investigate a family secret, and her narration keeps affection, memory, and incomplete knowledge in view at once.
If you liked this
Edition and details
- Publisher
- Random House Trade Paperbacks
- Publication year
- 2008
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 336
- ISBN
- 9780812971835
- Edition language
- English
- Original language
- English
- First published
- 2008
- Genres and form
- Fiction · Short Stories · Literary Fiction · Literary fiction · Contemporary literary · Psychological fiction
- Editions
- 14
- Languages
- 4 (English, French, Polish, Russian)