This is a rare pleasure too. Discovering an author seems rare now. I love this book for its acuity and precision and clarity.
The story is of a tough cantankerous horrible in some ways old lady, and her relationship with her maybe slightly wet husband. I feel like their lives are made unbearable by their misfortunate choice to stop at a hospital so that Olive can take a pee, this is the turning point of the book. Olive and her husbane end up held at gunpoint by two addicts breaking into the pharmacy. In this frightening moment, exposed and afraid of being killed the two vocalise the hateful thoughts they had about each other, and this leaves a dark stain on their old, both tough but fragile hearts.
The truth can only be glimpsed in this book and each chapter is almost a short story often only incidentally about Olive - a picture builds of a small Maine town too, and the families and generations around Olive. The throwaway lines in one chapter are shocking because of what else we know (like when the pharmacy that was the whole focus of the Husbands live in chapter one is mentioned in passing to be a chain now) so the book does give us privileged view of a town, but that seems almost the easy bit in this story, the part I love is the insight into Olive herself.
I'm reading more Strout because of this book.
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