Olive Kitteridge Elizabeth Stout

This wonderful book won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for fiction-I loved it, although at times it made me very sad. It is a series of short stories but all with the same characters, and it is basically chronological; Olive features in all of the stories, but they are told by different voices. One review described Olive as a "gruff, 60 something 'prickly 'school teacher" but she is also very likable. You also get a good feeling for what life is like in a small-town Maine environment. And you also get relationships, from different viewpoints, about mothers and sons, wives and husbands, and various stages of life. In the end, I was glad when Olive decides she isn't ready to leave it yet.