Olive Kitteridge-Strout (Book #71)

I've heard so much buzz about this book I couldn't resist picking it up. The book is a series of thirteen short stories of a town called Crosby, Maine. Each story focuses on different characters though Olive somehow is present in each scene. I normally don't like short-stories because I find the endings too vague and unsatisfying but I did not feel that with this book. Olive is a very complicated woman and Strout does a good job with her. For the most part she is a difficult woman, particularly when the stories are not told from her point of view. But when we see her eyes on a situation I kind of get it, even when she's destroying her daughter-in-laws clothing, or being cruel in the words she uses. Overall, I enjoyed this collection of stories and it has left me thinking about other difficult people in my lives. I wonder, like Olive, are they completely incapabable of changign or understanding how they come across? It helps me at least with a degree of empathy.