Ultimately Olive loses her second husband, the man who had loved her ‘Oliveness’. But the theme of class hierarchies and poverty continue through each story, as people learn to live with each other and the disappointments and catastrophes of their lives. In some stories Olive makes only a small appearance, always in character but sometimes it feels too engineered.

She is intelligent rather than warm and does not conform to small town social regulation. And we see that people hold onto their images of her. We see how she pushes people away, expects obedience from children, speaks truth rather than tact. We see her clumsiness with people, her abruptness and her kindness. The reader is perhaps more observant than Olive. And it had to have been there for years, maybe all of her life, how would she know? (91) She could not understand what it was about her, but it was about her that had cause this to happen. She did not have a family as other people did. She must have been failing for years and not realized it. It came to her then with a horrible whoosh of the crescendo of truth. Now he visits with his new wife and the visit again does not go well. They fell out badly when Olive went on a visit to New York to stay with his family, as revealed in Olive Kitteridge. And Olive’s relationship with her adult son has never been good. The distress of a young woman unable to choose butter in a supermarket is noticed by Olive, who helps her make her purchases, sees her home and visits when no one else does, for the woman is undergoing chemotherapy. Teacher and students meet from time to time, the young people now adults, and some of them benefit from her observations about people’s suffering and her lapses into kindness. She was harsh, distant with occasional flashes of wisdom for her students. Many of the characters were taught Maths (Math) by Olive Kitteridge, and the image of her formed during this time endures.

Mostly we are in Crosby but a nearby town, Shirley Falls, has been ‘overrun’ by ‘Somalians’, and the mills have closed and been demolished. We are shown small town East Coast American life, with its controlling gossip, unspoken standards and long memories. This collection of stories take us through the years of her second marriage and widowhood and into old age and its terrors. In the final episodes of the previous book Olive had recently been widowed and had met Jack – a Republican to her horror – with whom she became friendly and ultimately intimate.

Olive again review