Elizabeth Strout has come back strongly after the disappointing Abide with Me to fashion a novel of small town life from interlinked short stories. Put yourself in coastal Maine--smell the pine needles and the salty air. The sense of place and strong characters reminded me of the best of Lee Smith's portraits of life in Appalachia. Olive Kitteridge figures in major and minor ways in most if not all of the stories, but she is far from the only "main" character. A former 7th grade math teacher (a fate worse than death, in my book), Olive is an opinionated, bossy wife and mother who feels disdain for just about everyone except her son whom she attempts to smother and who finally escapes by marrying badly and leaving town. By book's end though, even Olive has started to shows signs of an ability to reflect. She is still critical of others, but she realizes sadly that she has wasted most of her days not fully appreciating her good husband and the life she enjoyed all the years she chafed at it.