Undoing Olive: Living with Alterity in Elizabeth Strout’sOlive KitteridgeBooks

In this paper, I analyze the Olive Kitteridge books written by contemporary American writer Elizabeth Strout. Though Strout’s work can be seen within a broader context of a post -postmodern literature that has returned largely to Realist forms, I argue that Strout’s characters are undone in their relationship to alterity in significant ways. This turn to the other in Strout shows the continued relevance and power of post-structuralist ideas of alterity in thinking through contemporary literature.