In Defense of Olive

Neither work, nor flu, nor a ridiculous trek will keep me from posting (for more than a week). I totally concur that the ending is hopeful. It seems to me that there is a recurring theme about the tug of war between despair/suicide and hope/reinvention. You can see that in the Piano Player, Starving, Incoming Tide, Basket of Trips, Olive needing to decide whether or not to plant the tulips in Tulips...I feel like it comes up in almost every story. Many of the characters are faced with making a decision about who they want to be...if they will succumb to the path that was laid before them or try to reinvent themselves - at least enough to be happier. Olive seems to decide to make a new life for herself in the final story.

I've realized as we've started to talk that I feel a little protective of Olive. I think she has good intentions but isn't aware of how other people perceive her actions. And the author seems ambivalent about whether she would be better off with greater awareness. In A Little Burst, A Different Road, and Security, increased awareness of how she is seen by Suzanne, Henry, and Christopher seems to only cause her pain. Certainly Suzanne doesn't come off well in A Little Burst and I kind of wanted to sock Christopher by the end of Security. I may be reacting to being out here in the land of indirect passive aggressivity a bit too long but how do you get to 40 or how ever old Christopher is hanging on to all of that stuff about your mother and then just dump it on her all at once when she's trapped as your guest in your house? It just seemed cruel. If you let four decades go by without ever cluing your mother in to how her behavior makes you feel shouldn't you let it go at that point? Change your expectations? It doesn't seem fair to blindside her that way. I thought his behavior on the phone and in person towards Olive once Henry is in the nursing home was awful. Like it was too big an imposition to express the least bit of concern for her.

To go into full geek-mode, I started thinking about Sartre's No Exit while reading this - the whole "hell is other people" thing. You can't control how others see you yet you can be deeply hurt by another's perception of you. But I would add to that - when you are seen and appreciated for who you truly are or maybe more accurately, seen as the person you are trying to be, it's hard not to fall for the person who sees you that way. Olive says after meeting Jim O'Casey that she had been seen. "And she had not even known she'd felt invisible."

In contrast to Olive's obtuseness with how others see her, I actually think she shows some real insight with regard to others. I do think she got in Kevin's car to help him. Not that she knew exactly what he wanted to do but I think she had some intuition about the frame of mind of a young man who lost his mother the way he did now loitering in a parking lot in his hometown where he hasn't been seen for more than a decade. And I was so touched by her response to Nina, the girl with anorexia, and the empathy she showed her so effortlessly. And her annoyance with the daughter-in-law's expectation that Olive should have expected that Nina would die from her disease. Fundamentally, I think Olive is someone who hopes and doesn't want to be told that she shouldn't.

What do you think the author is trying to say about "settling?" On one hand, she seems to be urging her characters towards reinvention and happiness. But on the other hand, she seems to be encouraging avoiding being alone above almost everything else. Olive and Henry stay together despite Denise and Jim and everything else. Jane and Bob seem to make the same decision in Winter Concert. Olive and Jack are together despite not being people they would have chosen earlier in life.

Thoughts on Harmon and Bonnie, their kids, and Daisy? And Christopher's new wife Ann - what do you think about her?