Olive, Again

Olive Kittridge was a curmudgeon in the book by the same name. In Olive Again she is an older curmudgeon but just as onery and outspoken as ever which somehow is comforting to me. I think it's great that Olive is true and transparent even though she rubs some people the wrong way. A few people can look past her gruff exterior and appreciate Olive. One of them is a man named Jack. This story is set is a small coastal town in Maine. Olive is fairly critical of the people in her town but sometimes she goes out of her way to be kind. One day at the grocery store she sees a former student struggling to find her groceries. This former student is now a mother of teenagers and struggling from the effects of chemotherapy for her breast cancer. Olive helps her at the store and then comes to her house to visit weekly until the woman gets her strength back. Where the woman's friends were afraid to visit her when ill, Olive didn't mind visiting at all. As the former math teacher in junior high many of the towns people were in her class. To some students she was an inspiration. Others thought she was a battle axe. Olive may be brusque and rude at times but a person always knew where they stood with Olive and I think that is a good thing.