Elizabeth Strout, Really!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                      This was my 101st book for the year, and it proves Strout is one of the best at the novel-as-a-series-of-short-stories technique.  Yes, Olive Kitteridge is back again, first a widow of her first husband, Henry, then living in Crosby, Maine, where she meets and marries former Harvard professor Jack Tennison, whom she is eventually widowed from, and ends up accepting her life in as assistant living place.

                                        I love Olive, and any chance to visit with her is a treat, but there are other little baubles along the way that  raise the eyebrows, on this one.  Jack has a daughter, living on the West Coast, who is a lesbian, and he finds this unacceptable.  Uh huh.  Even Olive tells him to lighten up, but this Harvard prof is crass, for all his erudition.  Crassness comes in all shapes, sizes and social classes.

                                           However, the real howler is this young woman, Lisa, making a living for herself in New York, which the Maine residents think is a dreadful place.  Things get even dicier when Lisa tells her family she is to be the subject of a documentary film, because of what she does  for a living.  Are you ready, girls?  She is a dominatrix, and proud of it; she even describes a client who likes to be defecated on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                              Miss Strout, really, what are you up to?  We are long past the days of McCalll's darling, but scat porno??????????????   I mean, I'm from New York, so I have heard of such things, but Crosby, Maine, is not ready for such.  They probably have not gotten over Grace Metalious writing "Peyton Place," and the movie being filmed in their state.

                                                 Nevertheless, something keeps the reader going with Olive, despite the author's forays into the sordid.  This includes suicide, in the tale of a prize winning student, who goes to Vassar, and, upon graduation, kills herself, because she knows she will have to return home to, at least temporarily, live with her father, who has been sexually abusing her for years.

                                                    "Olive, Again" has Strout's fine writing style, but was a bit darker than I was expecting.  Even though the title character has always had a dour side, the author here seems to be interested in pushing the envelope here, and I, for one, cannot understand why.

                                                       As for Olive, I have a feeling she will be back for one last hurrah.

                                                       Plenty happens in a nursing home, darlings!  And if anyone can make things happen, it is Strout, and Olive!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!