Lynn told me that "Olive Kitteridge" was not a happy book but was beautifully written. I read it since I like to read some of what she reads, to know and share her world of books. I was not prepared for the skill and subtlety Elizabeth Strout laid on me. The stories are set in Maine. I don't usually go for story collections and have had better experience with one story. The first Maeve Binchy book I ever read, The Lavender Bus, like "Olive", was a series of stories of young people near Dublin. A character was minor in a story but was major in a later one. This is similar to the stories in "Olive", where she might be the focus of a story or a minor character in the next one. Whatever, I experienced that unrelenting hunger to read the next chapter that I get from a story or character that really takes hold of my imagination. Olive is a big woman physically, a tough Yankee who feels all the emotions but admits to little, even to herself. I didn't realize that the book won the last Pulitzer prize for fiction when I read it but I thought it was fully deserved.
"Scones" is the most recent of a series about characters who initially lived in the same apartment building in Edinburgh. They are all memorable and interesting but maybe the most arresting ones are Bertie, a highly intelligent 6 year old boy, Irene, Bertie's modern, liberal, rigid and stupid mother and Bruce, a very good looking young man in his later twenties who is truly in love with himself, his own beauty and his own charm. I think most readers would like and sympathize with Bertie, ache to drop Irene off a cliff and find Bruce simply breath-taking for his pride and ego.
