Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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No Olives, Please

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

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I have a friend who dislikes mushrooms and tries them again annually just to see if her taste buds have changed. I find her dislike intriguing in part because I love mushrooms and often wonder if the dissonance is due to qualia and my “mushroom” tastes different to her “mushroom” or if what I taste is identical to what she does and she doesn’t enjoy the flavor I love. My feelings about olives is similar if less intense; I don’t hate olives, but I would […]

Olive, Again (Again)

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A perusal of my library’s digital audiobook library lead me to this book as it was in the “available now/hot commodity” bucket. This book is a sequel to Olive Kitteridge and I thought I remembered liking it, so I dove in. After scanning my review of the original book I learned that I really moreso thought it just okay, and I’d say my opinion of Strout is consistent. In fact, she is so consistent that my review of this book could literally be word for […]

Imperfect love and ruthless writing

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

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This is a story about a mother who loves her daughter. Imperfectly. Because we all love imperfectly. Unintentionally, I have read two novels in a row that have to do with imperfect mothering told from the perspectives of women who have been imperfectly parented and who in turn recognize their own shortcomings. In The Language of Flowers the narrator was quite young, an orphan, and dealing in real time with the daily ramifications of imperfect parenting. In My Name is Lucy Barton, the narrator is older, […]

She didn’t like to be alone. Even more, she didn’t like being with people.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

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This is a book that takes place in a small Maine town. The central locus of this book is Olive Kitteridge, a retired middle school math teacher with a pharmacist for a husband and a podiatrist for a son. She’s not the center of every single story in the collection, but she is the glue and often the catalyst for them separately and/or together. This is labeled as a “novel in stories” and there’s a lot of different of these floating around. Ultimately I think […]

We’re all just a mess

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Anything is Possible (2017) is another book I picked up on President Obama’s recommendation. I remember reading Olive Kittredge (2008) many years ago–it must have been right after it was published. At the time I was impressed by the writing, but the details are fuzzy. Anything is Possible is similar in construction: a novel composed of interconnected short stories. However, these stories take place in a small, Midwestern farming community instead of a small town in Maine. Lucy Barton is the primary connection in these short stories. Everyone in the […]



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