Elizabeth Strout first wrote about her protagonist, Olive Kitteridge, in her 2008 novel bearing her heroine's name; this sequel follows a similar format, and consist of thirteen short stories set on the coast of Maine, that do not follow on from each other, although they are all related to each other in terms of events that are referenced or characters that Olive encounters. In this book, Olive is enjoying her seventies, and the stories cover ten years of her life.
Unlike most sequels, the book received better reviews than its predecessor, with almost universal critical acclaim and a public that could not get enough of Stroud's interesting septuagenarian. The book also became one of the choices for Oprah's Book Club, which of course boosted sales in a way that rave reviews, whilst welcome, never could have done. That the sequel should be even more popular than Olive Kitteridge was nothing short of a triumph given that Strout's introduction to Olive became a New York Times bestseller, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was adapted into a mini-series that won a plethora of Emmy Awards.
Strout has a tendency to sequelize her most popular characters, repeating the exercise with 2010's My Name Is Lucy Barton and Anything Is Possible which was published seven years later.
