Olive, Again, and Elusive Faith

I read Elizabeth Strout's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Olice Kitteridge, year's ago It was not long after the acclaim for her insightful story, or more accurately, 13 interconnected stories, which have as a common thread the rather crusty small-town teacher, Olive, and her husband Henry. 

I just finished Olive, Again, a sequel in a way. Olive is retired and older, Henry has died, and the town of Crosby, Maine is still a place which is quite ordinary in some respects. The reality, once again, is that even in unremarkable communities people struggle in relationships, secrets are both kept and revealed, illness redirects their lives, and some die. 

Olive becomes seems to be even more blunt and eccentric, yet also more accepting and reflective. I wasn't sure I really wanted to read this new novel at the start, then found myself drawn in. As someone who is aging, generally active, "only as old as you feel" some days and just damn old on others, I appreciated the honesty and insight as Olive moves through her 70's and 80's, making uneasy peace with her limitations and surprised to find love again. 

As with Olive Kitteridge, there is a supporting cast of characters in the succession of stories who have lives of the their own, even as they brush against Olive's life. In the chapter/story called "Helped" a woman named Suzanne is required to visit the lawyer of her father who has just come to an untimely end. Bernie was also a friend of her parents, and has known Suzanne, now a lawyer herself, since childhood. 

Suzanne is there to find out the provisions of her father's will, yet their conversation shifts. The gentle, understanding, Bernie, becomes more like a gracious priest, listening and offering assurance as Suzanne shares secrets. Then there is a remarkable intimacy which unfolds as Suzanne asks one last thing "Do you have any faith? Religious faith, I mean?" She was raised as a nominal Christian, he is the non-observant Jewish son of parents who perished in the Holocaust. 

They discover that while neither of them is religious in a traditional sense both have a indescribable yet persistent sense of something beyond themselves and greater than themselves. Suzanne has heard the arguments of others against the existence of God -- childhood cancer, people who die in earthquakes -- but figures they are barking up the wrong tree. She then concedes: "But I couldn't say what the right tree is -- or who to bark up it." 

I found this exchange quite compelling and powerful. It seemed to capture the sensibilities of so many in what is supposedly am increasingly secular society where the presence of the "much larger than we are" stubbornly persists in the background. 

As I finished Olive, Again I was surprisingly moved. Olive is 87 as the story concludes, and in "assisted living." This may be the last we hear of her. I'll miss her grumpy honesty and insights.  I would certainly recommend reading Olive, Again, and while starting with Olive Kitteridge would help, it isn't necessary. 

Have you read either of these novels? Any comments about Suzanne and Bernie's conversation?