W: Elizabeth, welcome to Waterstones
first of all ES: Thank you lovely to be here. W: It's great to have you here and I think it's
great have Olive back in our lives again. I think anyone who's read Olive
Kitteridge will know her voice and her character and her mannerisms and I
wondered first when was it you started to hear that voice again demanding to be written about? ES: Right, well I had never expected to hear it again. I had never expected for her to
reappear in my life but, I don't know, probably four years ago. I just can't
really remember exactly. But I was sitting in a cafe in Norway and I was
just checking my emails and she just showed up. She just showed up again. And I
saw her nosing her car into the marina and getting out of the car, only this
time she had a cane and I realised, okay, she's older but she
was still so Olive. And so I realised I had to get it down right away because
she's Olive and attention must be paid when Olive shows up! So I
did. So I wrote it down quickly and within a few days I had sketched out
that particular chapter called The Poet. And then I realised, we're back,
she's back. W: Let's talk a bit about actually the form of the books because those chapters are almost sort of separate stories. ES: Yeah, they're separate stories W: Why was it that that was the form that the story took? ES: Because in the
original Olive Kitteridge I had written, I wrote one story, the story at her son's
wedding, that was the first story I wrote in that. And then I realised... I
thought I'm gonna write a book called Olive Stories. But then as I was putting
it together I realised you know she's an awful lot to take on every page. If I
was a reader I wouldn't want to see Olive on every single page. And then I
realized that you know I'm always interested in how people think they know
somebody but they really only know a certain part of them. And then somebody
else knows a different part of them. And so that that got me interested in seeing Olive from different people's points of view in town. And then they became
characters in and of themselves. And so that's how I wrote that and then when I
returned to Olive - because she's episodic. You know it's like that's what
comes through my mind is that she's episodic and therefore she can only have
a certain amount of stage time because she's a lot. W: And it does allow
you I suppose to shine a light or to put the focus on different people from
the same community. ES: Exactly, and the community itself almost becomes a character. When I sit down to write I'm always thinking about the character.
I'm always concerned with the character first and foremost. But because people
live in a place and time in history then their place becomes apparent to me, right
away. Like when I saw Olive I could see the trees. I mean she was already
in her place. And so the the place and the landscape become apparent rather
quickly. But I do start always with the character. W: What's really interesting with
Olive as a character is in Olive Again a few other characters sort of
begrudgingly I suppose admit that they always kind of liked her. You know
they say I've always thought she was okay. Because she's seen as this sort of
cantankerous old woman but actually they do like her and I wondered why it
was you thought that other people do actually like her despite the fact that
she can be very, very difficult. ES: Right, well you know it's funny because you
only catch little glimpses of people saying 'Well, I always liked her. She may not be everybody's cup of tea but I always liked her.' And so the person
saying that is somebody that I recognize who will appreciate Olive's qualities as
opposed to having been the brunt of her qualities. W: And you mentioned
that when these new stories came to you that you saw immediately that she was
older and this idea of ageing is so important in the book. And also I suppose
tied with it this idea of loneliness. Could you tell us a little bit more about that? ES: Well, you know she starts off lonely because she's lost her husband Henry. And
then she gets married to Jack Kennison, which is like so bizarre in a way. But as
I was writing about Jack and Olive, I realised they actually made a certain
kind of sense. They made perfect sense in a certain kind of way because they were
both able to be themselves with each other. And then she loses Jack. And
then she begins to have a different level of loneliness after that and then
at the end she's not as lonely because she's found a friend. But I think that
there are many people in the world but in my country and
I'm sure yours as well who do end up living alone and
find the days longer than they used to find them. W: There's an interesting
conversation she has with a Somali nurse, where there's a difference in culture where she's talking, this Somali nurse is talking about how families stay together, whereas in Western societies as Olive says you know my son gets married
he leaves home and that's it. ES. Yeah, that was true. I mean
when I wrote that I realised oh that's actually true. W: The thing also that
struck me as well was there's something about writing older women - so again when
I was filming with another author, Bernardine Evaristo, who was one of the
joint winners of the Booker Prize this year and she said that the book
Girl, Woman, Other, that she had written she could only have written now that she was
older. Because she wanted to write about older women and she said when
you're young authors tend to write old women is kind of mad old bags and that's
all they are. And she needed more time to think about what it is to be an
older woman. You of course were published when you were in your 40s and
you've been writing, I just wondered whether you felt that that maturity has
helped you to write these books. ES: Absolutely it has. Because you know I've gotten
older. And so Olive gets older. I mean she's older than I am obviously but
my understanding of the world and just watching, because I'm always watching and
observing people all the time. And there are plenty of people, particularly
in Maine, and as I said anywhere but you know in New York they're harder to watch in
their homes you know, because they're on the sidewalk and you can tell
oh that person is struggling because they're older or something like that. But
in Maine I have been able to observe and watch and seen people who are going
through these kinds of transitions. W: Allied to this idea of wisdom that comes with age is also the capacity
to be surprised. Olive is still constantly discovering things. ES: Exactly, that's right. W: That's quite an interesting thing throughout the book actually with people being surprised about what they discover, about even
their own family and close friends ES: Exactly, right, and you know Olive continues
to grow in this book. To a real extent actually. Like when the home health care
workers come over and the Somalian worker comes and then
the other woman comes with the, you know, the bumper sticker, that awful orange-haired man that Olive would rather die than be seen with that bumper
sticker. But Betty, who has the bumper sticker - it was very
interesting for me as I wrote that story to realize how that story was going to
turn out. Because Olive actually she's upset with Betty but then she realises
well Betty has her life. So tell me about your life, Betty. And I
thought oh look at you, Olive! You're actually, you know, really asking somebody
to tell them about their lives and Betty's says oh, it's just a life and
she says well it's your life, I'd like to know. And so that was an
interesting story for me and I realised that Olive is growing, she's continuing
to grow. And she's able to at that point in her life actually be curious. I
mean I think she's always been curious but you know she's got the wherewithal
now to act on it. W: There's difference between the curiosity of
observing somebody and then actually engaging them in conversation. ES: Exactly right. And saying tell me.
And then the last line of that story I thought Oh, now it works as a story.
