Claire Lowdon

Less radical, less rich: Elizabeth Strout’s Olive, Again is a disappointment

Strout’s winning formula in Olive Kitteridge — describing mundane life punctuated by a startling event — is beginning to wear dangerously thin

issue 16 November 2019
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  • Olive, Again

    Elizabeth Strout

    Viking, pp. 289, £14

Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer-prize winning Olive Kitteridge (2008) is the novel I recommend to friends who don’t read much. Talk about bang for your buck. Strout packs more character and life into 337 pages than you’d expect to find in a novel twice that length and combines classic storytelling with elegant formal innovation.

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