New Book Announcement!

The next book we will be reading is Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout. With 139 reviews, this collection of interwoven stories has a 4.5-star average rating on Amazon. I thought short stories might be nice, since they're smaller bites, and more compatible with a summer schedule.

For the next discussion, I would like to try to have a more discussion-friendly format, maybe using a chat room somewhere, start with a list of questions, and go from there. What would anyone think about that? Suggestions? I would like to do this around September 1.

Post if you plan to read: one randomly chosen person will get the book! Let's say, posts have to be made by the 17th.

Here's a review:

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Thirteen linked tales from Strout (Abide with Me, etc.) present a heart-wrenching, penetrating portrait of ordinary coastal Mainers living lives of quiet grief intermingled with flashes of human connection. The opening Pharmacy focuses on terse, dry junior high-school teacher Olive Kitteridge and her gregarious pharmacist husband, Henry, both of whom have survived the loss of a psychologically damaged parent, and both of whom suffer painful attractions to co-workers. Their son, Christopher, takes center stage in A Little Burst, which describes his wedding in humorous, somewhat disturbing detail, and in Security, where Olive, in her 70s, visits Christopher and his family in New York. Strout's fiction showcases her ability to reveal through familiar details—the mother-of-the-groom's wedding dress, a grandmother's disapproving observations of how her grandchildren are raised—the seeds of tragedy. Themes of suicide, depression, bad communication, aging and love, run through these stories, none more vivid or touching than Incoming Tide, where Olive chats with former student Kevin Coulson as they watch waitress Patty Howe by the seashore, all three struggling with their own misgivings about life. Like this story, the collection is easy to read and impossible to forget. Its literary craft and emotional power will surprise readers unfamiliar with Strout. (Apr.)
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