Family Lessons from Olive Kittridge by Dipika Mukherjee
It is the season for families and feasting; and for some of us, the season to catch up on books we've wanted to read through the year but never did. Which is how I -- FINALLY -- read Olive Kitteridge by the fabulous Elizabeth Strout . This is a book that won the Pulitzer Prize and is now an HBO miniseries. It interlinks short stories around the central character of Olive Kitteridge, a female curmudgeon whom the reader meets at various stages of her life, as seen through different eyes. Olive is wonderfully nuanced as a character, as are the rest of the cast. This is also a season of forced jollity and family tensions and this book, by making us empathise with a misanthrope, is a master class on how to love the people in our lives, warts and all. My favourite story was "Security", and as Olive grapples with parenting mistakes and a grown-up son, the story is excruciatingly painful and heartwarming at the same time. The message driven home by this b...