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November 8, 2019

George Ernsberger - Columnist
Posted 11/8/19

OLIVE, AGAIN by Elizabeth Strout (Random House). Again really is the word, here. This new book is every bit the equal of her OLIVE KITTERIDGE, of 2008, a great American novel and an immortal …

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November 8, 2019

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OLIVE, AGAIN by Elizabeth Strout (Random House). Again really is the word, here. This new book is every bit the equal of her OLIVE KITTERIDGE, of 2008, a great American novel and an immortal character in American fiction, a crabby, caustic woman that (you may recall) you didn't even like until you were halfway through that first one. One loved the book well before that halfway point, though, and had begun to appreciate Olive herself. She's never satisfied, but we learn, gradually, that her standards are not so crazy. And her wit has a point, often. And she's sometimes, almost accidentally, generous. The first person we meet in this new book—like the classic, this is actually thirteen stories, yet absolutely a single work of art, a novel—the first person we meet, here, is not Olive but a similarly difficult—self-aware but really, seriously difficult, old guy (Strout still doesn't want us comfortable, too soon); by page 3 we half-love—or, well, we can half-stand this old grouch just from getting to know him so intimately, so quickly. He will become Olive's second husband (she is widowed, as we begin, now). This book may actually be better than that first one. Maybe not, but, well, I've just put this one down.

LIFE UNDERCOVER: Coming of Age in the CIA by Amaryllis Fox (Knopf). Another new book about the women in the intelligence services who never used to show up in books. But not a dutiful filling of the historical gaps, rather a whip-smart (finally an almost appropriate use for that expression), actually thrilling joyride of a memoir. There is some news—who'd have guessed how much CIA can do with women just out of college—sometimes, even, only almost out? That some of them might be brilliant and also adventurous really isn't news, though, is it? But this isn't just action-adventure, there are emotional side effects of this kind of work that the author reports on with real thought and feeling. She became a young wife and mother in the midst of also living a clandestine, sometimes deadly dangerous life, and that seemed to turn “thrilling!” into “thrilling, but also. . . .”

AND TWO VERY DIFFERENT BUT EQUALLY SPLENDID, LONG-RUNNING FAVORITES

BLUE MOON by Lee Child (Delacorte). In certain ways the real star of this week's column—at least in bestseller-list terms, and nobody ever deserved that “automatic” status more. Jack Reacher gets off a bus in a middle-sized city and. . . .

A CRUEL DECEPTION by Charles Todd (Morrow). The great Army nurse Bess Crawford, now at the very end of the Great War, and again on a non-medical and non-military mission, in Paris. This series is becoming as much thrillers as “amateur-sleuth” mysteries. We still meet patients damaged by the war, but real intrigue, of an international nature, is now an ingredient, too.

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