Olive Kitteridge

The latest book club pick is Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout.  This is a collection of short stories that all share a character - Olive Kitteridge.  I really enjoyed this one a lot.  All of the characters were very New England-ey and the writing style was just really enjoyable.  I felt like I could related to some of the characters in this book a lot.  A lot of them have stayed in their home towns for their whole lives and expected their kids to do the same also.  One part of the book really got me.  Olive and Henry's son Christopher gets married and moves out of the house that his parents built for him to go to California with his new wife.  Olive and Henry are just so crushed by this and it always comes up throughout the entire book. I wonder if that's how my family feels about me and my brother moving far away.  It made me sad. I don't think that Christopher should have stayed in that town forever, but it just made me sad.  A lot of the themes in this book were along those lines.  Even though some of them were sad, I still really liked reading the whole thing. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes crazy New England up-tightness and reading stories about families.