Black Olives
Nine months later, I run into David for the first time since our breakup. All year I’ve been dreading this moment, but always dressing in expectation of it, because when I do see him, finally, I want to look good.
Upon a chance sighting of her ex-boyfriend, Virginia climbs into the back of his Jeep and hides there. Over the course of a single day, Virginia remembers the sweetness of their affair, the bitterness of their break-up, as she rides, unseen, in the back of his car, observing the man she once loved.
If you’ve ever been dumped, you will find yourself in this story.
Praise for Black Olives
“What is obsession? What is desire? What is pure lust? And what, what does love have to do with it? In prose as succulent as olives, Martha Tod Dudman attacks this eternal snarl, and the result is a hilarious, charming novel especially for women past forty who still insist on outrageous underwear, great sex, and new territory when it comes to living days of power and nights with men.” – Honor Moore, author of Red Shoes, The Bishop’s Daughter, and Our Revolution: A Mother and Daughter at Midcentury
“The physical landscape of Black Olives is a small town in Downeast Maine, but the emotional landscape is that of the human heart. In particular, it is the female heart that Martha Tod Dudman so skillfully mines…this book, Dear Reader, is a page-turner, right up to its lyrical and surprising end.” - Cathy Pelletier, author of The Funeral Makers, The Weight of Winter, and Running the Bulls
“Dudman’s fiction works so well because it’s true…Black Olives should resonate with anyone who’s been blindsided by a loss of love, whether 20 or 60, guy or gal…The book…packs in lots of triggers that can shoot a reader back into his or her past…in writing that is meticulous and evocative...” - St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Smart, sad, and funny, this compulsively readable novel examines later love and its discontents, demonstrating with wit and rue that breaking up is hard to do at any age.”
– Judith Viorst
author of I’m Too Young to be Seventy, and Other Delusions and co-author of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day