Imserba Webstore - Opening Atlantis [With Earbuds] (Playaway Adult Fiction)

	List Price: $69.99 Our Price: $69.99 Your Save: $ ( % ) Availability: Usually ships in 3 to 5 weeks Manufacturer: Playaway
Average Customer Rating:
Binding: Preloaded Digital Audio Player EAN: 9781615457441 ISBN: 1615457445 Label: Playaway Manufacturer: Playaway Number Of Items: 1 Publication Date: 2009-05 Publisher: Playaway Studio: Playaway
Related Items The Help The Elegance of the Hedgehog Abide with Me: A Novel Amy and Isabelle: A novel The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Random House Reader's Circle)
Editorial Reviews: At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse. As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life–sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty. Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition–its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires. Praise for Olive Kitteridge: “Perceptive, deeply empathetic . . . Olive is the axis around which these thirteen complex, relentlessly human narratives spin themselves into Elizabeth Strout’s unforgettable novel in stories.” –O: The Oprah Magazine “Fiction lovers, remember this name: Olive Kitteridge. . . . You’ll never forget her. . . . [Elizabeth Strout] constructs her stories with rich irony and moments of genuine surprise and intense emotion. . . . Glorious, powerful stuff.” –USA Today “Funny, wicked and remorseful, Mrs. Kitteridge is a compelling life force, a red-blooded original. When she’s not onstage, we look forward to her return. The book is a page-turner because of her.” –San Francisco Chronicle “Olive Kitteridge still lingers in memory like a treasured photograph.” –Seattle Post-Intelligencer “Rarely does a story collection pack such a gutsy emotional punch.” –Entertainment Weekly “Strout animates the ordinary with astonishing force. . . . [She] makes us experience not only the terrors of change but also the terrifying hope that change can bring: she plunges us into these churning waters and we come up gasping for air.” –The New Yorker
Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Forceful Comment: The thirteen connected stories in Elizabeth Strout's new collection titled, Olive Kitteridge, are set principally in Maine, and combine to produce what feels like a novel, and a comprehensive view of a memorable character. Olive could readily be called "a piece of work." Her forceful character, formed by rugged Maine life, dominates these stories. As schoolteacher, friend, wife, mother and grandmother, she comes alive on these pages with the full package of strengths, weaknesses and quirks that make for an authentic human personality. Olive notices everything, has an opinion about the ways things should be, and often runs roughshod over everyone in her life, while she truly enjoys the love and beauty of life. Olive Kitteridge offers fine writing, especially to those readers who enjoy both the precision of the short story genre, and the sweep of continuity from viewing a character from multiple perspectives and time periods. Reading a story a day for two weeks may feel like a vacation in Maine, even in the story when Olive visits her son in New York. Rating: Three-star (Recommended) Customer Rating: Summary: Olive Kitteridge Comment: I loved this book. Olive has many dimensions as a human, like all of us she can do the right thing or react badly and do the wrong. Elizabeth Strout has captured what "Being Human" is all about. Customer Rating: Summary: Olive Kitteridge Comment: An interesting collection of characters, but all sad. The writing and character development make this a good, but depressing, read. Customer Rating: Summary: olive kittridge Comment: This Book kept me interested and it had very good insights into small town Main life but I swear I was beginning to think Olive was bipolar or something. And I also did not like the political smart ass comments. Customer Rating: Summary: Surprisingly bitter main character Comment: I picked up this book in part because it won a Pulitzer, but I was disappointed. The main character, Olive Kitteridge, is a tense, often-angry woman with no ability to self-censor her thoughts. While main characters need not be perfect, I never really got to like her, though she grows more sympathetic as she grows older. She lacks humor, making it even more puzzling that Strout would choose someone so basically unlikeable as the focus of these stories. Also, while all the stories supposedly have Olive as some sort of focal point, or give her relevance, two only mention her by name, and those stories seem not connected at all to the town of Crosby, Maine, where most of the action takes place. Finally, Olive's slams at former president GW Bush as a "moron" and as someone who looks "retarded" did nothing to further endear her to me, though it probably did some members of the Pulitzer committee. Her bona fides as someone sassy and opinionated were already well-documented; sticking in her political opinions seemed tacked on and irrelevant. What was the point? Three stars for Strout's excellent writing, though. [...]