Do I Need to Read Olive Kitteridge Before Reading Olive, Again?
After the announcement of Oprah's latest book club pick Olive, Again, many readers are wondering: Should they read the original before the sequel?
Here, O's books editor Leigh Haber shares her thoughts.
Elizabeth Strout is a bestselling writer whose characters will remain etched in our memories forever, with her most iconic being Olive Kitteridge. But after Oprah announced Strout's new book Olive, Again—the sequel to her Pulitzer Prize-winning 2008 novel Olive Kitteridge—the question remains: Which should you read first?
Good news, readers: While Olive, Again is technically a sequel, it also works as a standalone novel, with characters and story arcs so beautifully realized, it doesn’t matter if you are meeting them for the first time.
When I read the Olive Kitteridge in 2008, I remember thinking how unusual it was to encounter a heroine with so many traits we think of as unlikable. Olive is brisk—to the point of incivility. She appears to never censor her thoughts before they emerge as words, and often what she’s thinking is harsh and judgmental—but also funny, with fleeting observations that might cross our own minds before we shoo them away. And Olive is definitely not an ideal wife and mother.
But on the other hand, Strout's protagonist is always there in a pinch. She’s honest. She has a well-honed bullshit detector. She’s as hard on herself as she is on others, and she tries, in her way, to always become a better person. And this remains true in Olive, Again, where Olive is older and perhaps slightly wiser...albeit, as Oprah puts it, with edges that haven’t smoothed over time.
Oprah’s announcement of Olive, Again as her second Oprah’s Book Club pick in her new partnership with Apple is exciting for many reasons, not least because it will encourage more readers to get to know this quirky yet endearing character. And while you don’t need to read Olive Kitteridge first, I predict that as soon as you finish Olive, Again, you’ll want to devour everything Strout has written—extending all the way back to 1998, when her first book, Amy and Isabelle, was finally published after hundreds of rejections.
Olive is as refreshing (and sometimes as shocking) as a dip in the waters off the coast of Maine—a heroine who, as Oprah puts it, “doesn’t have the disease to please.” And it’s soul-nourishing to inhabit her hometown of Crosby, Maine, for a spell, where it seems her neighbors all know one another. If you can forgive them of their youthful indiscretions, failed marriages, and assorted scandals and appreciate the way they gather over clam chowder in times of celebration and crisis—you'll be reminded reminded that despite our differences, we’re all in this crazy world together.
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