I hope I don’t incur the wrath of bookstagram here but sadly I did not fall in love with Olive Kitteridge the way I anticipated. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a good read, excellent characterisation and the kind of musing on everyday life that I enjoy, but I wasn’t enamoured.

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It was definitely my own fault - for some reason, although I must have read dozens of reviews for this book by the time I started reading it, I didn’t realise it was made up of vignettes. Did my brain just block that part out of all the reviews I read? I was fully expecting a novel in the style of A Man Called Ove, and I was ready to fall in love with ornery Olive as we got to know her throughout the course of the book.

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Instead, we see what are essentially snapshots of Olive. Some vignettes focus on a period of her life specifically. Some of them focus on someone else in her town, while Olive flits through their lives in the background. Again, this isn’t bad! But when it’s not what you’re expecting, it kind of throws you for a loop.

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But there is a lot to love in this book! Strout’s style is very accessible for a character-driven book and she’s great at getting in the heads of all her characters. She tackles topics such an anorexia, marriage, divorce, adultery and alcoholism with sensitivity and grace. I felt attached to some characters after only a chapter in their presence, which is something to admire!

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As I mentioned earlier, I adore books which transform the everyday into the extraordinary, and make you appreciate the nuances of everyone’s day to day life. Mundane objects such as cinnamon sugar doughnuts, dried up starfish and antacids become imbued with new meaning; objects that, for some people, can’t be looked at without evoking a sense of joy, nostalgia, pain or regret.

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I’d recommend this one if you like quiet, character-drive stories about small town life and normal people - just don’t do what I did and expect a linear novel!