Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout won the Pulitzer for fiction a few years back. My friend recommended I read it, and I loved it. It is a hard book to read. Olive is not likable, but she is compelling. Frances McDormand is making it into an HBO mini-series and will play the lead role. The New York Times has a nice article about it.
Olive is a horrible mother and wife. She is incapable of being happy. Strout gets inside this woman's mind and we learn why she is so awful, and how she turns minor insults into major catastrophes. I remember one scene where Olive visits her grown son in New York. While she is there, she spills food on her shirt. No one tells her, and she is convinced they are laughing at her, when no one really noticed. Olive flips out, and starts screaming like a lunatic. Seriously -- she is a bona fide lunatic by then. I was surprised that I felt sorry for her.
Why did I like reading about this miserable woman who takes her anger out at the world? It was painful and cringe inducing. I read it a few years ago, and saw the article about the mini-series in the paper, and it brought up a lot of emotions. Maybe the book felt like a cautionary tale -- don't turn into a bitter crone. Lately, I feel a little bit like Olive: a mad, pissed off angry woman. Anger has taken hold of me, and yet I feel completely justified. It is not that I enjoy being angry. It is one of my least favorite states of mind. I think some people might thrive on righteous indignation, most of which is directed at my husband and the challenges we've faced in the past few months. I'd rather be calm. Yet, I am still angry. I thought I'd be mellowed out by now, but no.
Nevertheless, when I feel like I have been wronged and misunderstood, me and my anger are like a dog and a bone. I can't let it go. When I get to this point, I feel like something needs to change. I need to take a new direction, find a new path. Right now, anger is taking up a corner. I don't need it to take up more space.
This blog is about the little and big thoughts that pop into my head. I once read that when Flannery O'Connor walked into a bookstore, she would want to edit her published works with a red pen. In the digital world, we have the luxury of tweaking things up after we've hit the publish button. I can be a perfectionist/procrastinator, where waiting for the ideal means little gets done. Here I will share what is not--and likely will never be--perfect.
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