The pleasure in reading “Olive Kitteridge” comes from an intense identification with complicated, not always admirable, characters. And there are moments in which slipping into a character’s viewpoint seems to involve the revelation of an emotion more powerful and interesting than simple fellow feeling — a complex, sometimes dark, sometimes life-sustaining dependency on others. There’s nothing mawkish or cheap here. There’s simply the honest recognition that we need to try to understand people, even if we can’t stand them.
These kinds of character-driven novels tend to make me nervous. Mostly because there's nothing for the characters to drive. No plot, no story, no ideas, just quirky observations and emotional vampirism written as plainly and as tastefully as possible. You should always be concerned when the reviewer tries to assure you that there's nothing mawkish or cheap in a writer's narrative strategies. It usually means everything is mawkish and cheap.
Admittedly, I haven't read the book. But it's way too easy for me to imagine it as something awful.
