The relationship between Isabelle and Amy is emotionally abusive on both sides and it leads to a situation where a graver abuse – growing sexual intimacy between a high-school teacher and a pupil – seems actually to provide a possibility of escape. The mortifications that she depicted might seem small in scale, like a daughter pointing out that her mother doesn’t know how to pronounce ‘Yeats’ properly, but they are nonetheless devastating. In Amy and Isabelle (1998), Strout trained her gaze on the frictions of family and local communities.

And now they are seasoned with the indignities of old age. Even if some of the more fraught relationships, including Olive’s with her own son, have mellowed slightly, loneliness, marital unhappiness, parental disappointment and small-town humiliation are as acute as ever. These people are growing old now – Olive is in her eighties – and for her and other characters whom Strout’s readers have come to know, the time left is short. Jim and Bob Burgess, from The Burgess Boys (2013), put in an appearance too, and we even learn what became of Isabelle and Amy, the mother and daughter whose estrangement in Strout’s first novel seemed irremediable. The redoubtable Olive Kitteridge is there, of course, first introduced to the world in 2008 in the novel that bears her name.

What a sublime book.I n the fictional world Elizabeth Strout has created in the small towns of coastal Maine, characters are reassembling like old friends at a funeral. 'Her writing is exquisite her vision is boundless. 'She gets better with each book' Maggie O'Farrell 'A powerful storyteller immersed in the nuances of human relationships' Observer Olive adjusts to her new life with her second husband, challenges her estranged son and his family to accept him, experiences loss and loneliness, witnesses the triumphs and heartbreaks of her friends and neighbours in the small coastal town of Crosby, Maine - and, finally, opens herself to new lessons about life.

Olive, Again follows the blunt, contradictory yet deeply loveable Olive Kitteridge as she grows older, navigating the second half of her life as she comes to terms with the changes - sometimes welcome, sometimes not - in her own existence and in those around her. 'A superbly gifted storyteller and a craftswoman in a league of her own' Hilary Mantel From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Number One New York Times bestselling author of Olive Kitteridge and My Name is Lucy Barton

Olive again review