Variations on a Theme

[David]

In this earlier book by Elizabeth Strout we discover chapters, offered as stories, which are variations on a theme around the life of Olive Kitteredge in coastal Maine. Revolving characters, diverse yet familiar, arrive at similar resolutions in love and despair in a unity of author, reader and character. You will need to look deeply into the spacious, wide embrace of the narrative to find the common thread in the story, —David Taylor Johannesen