I once read that our lives are strung together by “blue moments” snapshots, of the mundane, of the sentimental, of the highlights…of times of great failings, and of great heroism. Olive is so human and irritating and raw that I couldn’t help but revere her strength, her easy refusal not to conform to other’s expectations to be a “good girl.”

“Back and forth she went each morning by the river, spring arriving once again; foolish, foolish spring, breaking open its tiny buds, and what she couldn’t stand was how—for many years, really—she had been made happy by such a thing. She had not thought she would ever become immune to the beauty of the physical world, but there you were. The river sparkled with the sun that rose, enough that she needed her sunglasses.”

This book seems “pultizer light” to me, can be easily consumed but not too heavy lasting…a merlot, not a zin. Quite pleasurable in its temperance. Olive has something to teach you. What she taught me? Loving involves losing, and the many many inadequacies of our love makes it worthy.