Reading Order
Olive Kitteridge Reading Order
Olive Kitteridge (2008) by Elizabeth Strout is the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel in stories — thirteen linked stories set in the fictional coastal Maine town of Crosby, each centering on a different character but all touched in some way by Olive Kitteridge, a retired seventh-grade math teacher who is formidable, often unkind, and capable of moments of astonishing empathy that she herself would barely recognize as empathy. Olive is one of the great characters in contemporary American fiction: a large woman with strong opinions and no patience for sentimentality, who has made her husband Henry's life more difficult than it needed to be and her son Christopher's childhood into something he needed to escape from, and who is coming in her 70s to a belated recognition of what she might have missed. Olive Kitteridge is extraordinary both as individual stories (each is completely achieved as a short story, with its own shape and its own emotional logic) and as a novel (the accumulated portrait of Olive and Crosby over several decades creates something larger than any individual story). The book is remarkable for its emotional intelligence — Strout understands exactly how people protect themselves from what they feel, and she portrays that protection with both clarity and compassion. The book was adapted into a 2014 HBO miniseries with Frances McDormand that won eight Emmy Awards and is considered one of the finest literary adaptations in American television.
Where to start
Olive Kitteridge — any Random House paperback. The thirteen stories can be read in any order but reward the sequence as printed. Olive, Again (2019) is the direct companion, following Olive in her late 70s and 80s.
Complete Olive Kitteridge Book List
- 1Buy
Olive Kitteridge
Elizabeth Strout·2008·The novel in stories — thirteen linked stories in Crosby, Maine, each touched by Olive Kitteridge; the Pulitzer Prize winner and Strout's defining work; the entry point to her fictional world. - 2Buy
Olive, Again
Elizabeth Strout·2019·The companion sequel — Olive in her late 70s and 80s, after the events of Olive Kitteridge; new Crosby characters alongside familiar ones; the essential continuation for readers who want to follow Olive into old age. - 3Buy
The Burgess Boys
Elizabeth Strout·2013·Strout's companion novel — two brothers from a small Maine town who left and the sister who stayed; the Maine small-town portrait in novel form rather than linked stories. - 4Buy
My Name Is Lucy Barton
Elizabeth Strout·2016·Strout's companion novel — Lucy Barton's hospitalization and her mother's visit; the female companion in her portrait of difficult family relationships; the most direct literary expression of the emotional themes that run through Olive Kitteridge. - 5Buy
Gilead
Marilynne Robinson·2004·Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — John Ames's letter to his young son; the companion in American fiction about a specific small-town community and the moral seriousness of ordinary lives; Gilead, Iowa is the Midwestern version of Crosby, Maine. - 6Buy
Plainsong
Kent Haruf·1999·Haruf's novel about Holt, Colorado — the companion in the tradition of American fiction that finds dignity in ordinary lives in specific small communities; Holt, Colorado is the plains version of Crosby, Maine, and Haruf's spare prose is the closest American contemporary style to Strout's. - 7Buy
The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen·2001·Franzen's National Book Award-winning novel — the companion in American fiction about difficult family relationships and the people who inflict damage without knowing or intending it; the Lambert family's dysfunction is the Midwestern, professional-class version of what Strout portrays in the working-class Maine communities of Olive Kitteridge. - 8Buy
A Visit from the Goon Squad
Jennifer Egan·2010·Egan's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — the companion in formally innovative American fiction that links stories across time and characters; where Strout's linked stories are quiet and coastal, Egan's are loud and urban; both show what a linked-story structure can achieve that a conventional novel cannot.
Olive Kitteridge — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Olive Kitteridge about?
Olive Kitteridge is a novel in thirteen linked stories, all set in the coastal Maine town of Crosby. Each story focuses on a different character or set of characters, but Olive Kitteridge — a recently retired seventh-grade math teacher — appears in each, sometimes centrally and sometimes at the periphery. The stories span several decades and trace Crosby's community across time: marriages, deaths, affairs, illnesses, the departure of children and the aging of parents. What accumulates across the stories is a portrait both of Olive and of the community she has been part of: Olive is formidable, often unkind, and capable of moments of genuine empathy she rarely acknowledges, and the community is full of people managing their lives with varying degrees of success.
Is Olive Kitteridge a novel or a short story collection?
Olive Kitteridge is both and neither — it is marketed and structured as a novel, but it is composed of thirteen complete, stand-alone stories. Each story has its own shape and its own emotional logic and can be read independently; but read in sequence, the stories accumulate into something larger than any individual piece — a portrait of Olive, of Crosby, and of the passage of time in a specific place. The book is often described as a 'novel in stories' or 'linked stories,' and it represents one of the most successful examples of that form in contemporary American fiction. The Pulitzer Prize committee treated it as a novel.
Why is Olive Kitteridge such a compelling character?
Olive Kitteridge is compelling because she is impossible in a way that feels entirely real — her formidability, her sharpness, her lack of sentimentality, and her inability to express what she feels are not comic exaggerations but precise psychological portraits of a certain kind of difficult person. What makes Olive more than a portrait of difficult personality is Strout's understanding of why Olive is the way she is and what it costs her: Olive is not unfeeling — she feels intensely — but she has no vocabulary for her feelings and no mechanism for expressing them that doesn't come out as criticism or demand. The moments when Olive does something genuinely kind — and she does, repeatedly, in ways she barely recognizes as kindness — are among the most moving passages in the book.
How does Olive Kitteridge relate to the other Strout novels?
Olive Kitteridge is Strout's fourth book and the one that made her famous, establishing her fictional world of coastal Maine and her interest in difficult women, family dysfunction, and the specific texture of small-community life. Olive, Again (2019) is a direct companion, following Olive in her late 70s and 80s. My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016) is set outside Maine and in a different mode — more formally spare, more explicitly about a writer looking back at her rural Illinois childhood — but shares Strout's essential concerns: difficult mothers, the families we come from, and the way the past continues to shape the present. The Burgess Boys (2013) returns to Maine and the small-community portrait.
What should I read after Olive Kitteridge?
After Olive Kitteridge, Olive, Again (2019) is the direct companion following Olive in old age. The Burgess Boys (2013) is Strout's companion Maine novel. My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016) and Oh William! (2021) are the companion Lucy Barton novels. For American fiction in the same tradition of small-community portraits, Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Kent Haruf's Plainsong are the most important companions.
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