There is a scene somewhere in the middle, when a dog is acquired, and a boy is asked to show it around the house. The language is all the space and room we get. I gather some of Haruf’s other books are novels of space, of Midwestern landscapes and I am mildly curious about the way a writer like this would tackle it, because in Our Souls At Night, we are not offered a fullness of description as far as the environments and backgrounds are concerned. It’s a deeply functional simplicity that creates a space for the story to unfold. It’s not musical, but it’s also not dull. Everything appears to have been said just as intended. There are no shadings to tone, no ambiguous phrases, vibrating with the unsaid. This may be surprising given that Haruf is a writer known for his “simple” style and not a Hemingwayesque simplicity at that. The major draw of the book is not the story, it’s the writing. So let me return to the beginning of this paragraph and add this to my critique: this just may not be for me. And it’s the most frustrating thing because Kent Haruf is clearly a good, extremely competent writer with total stylistic control, and his take on loneliness and the darkness of life is often powerful. It’s really hard not to find a writer of genteel suburbia who hasn’t written a book or story that blows Our Souls At Night out of the water. Other writers who cover similar territory in much superior fashion include John Updike, Philip Roth, late-period Grace Paley. Anyone attracted by summaries of this book is much better served with short stories by any of the authors I named in this paragraph, as are people looking for a story of aging love. No matter what your preferences are in fiction, or what element of this book could conceivably appeal to you, there are numerous superior options. There is really no reason to read or recommend this book. A big structure – not an empty room because the story is genuinely lovely, but a room too big and angular and impersonal for the small burst of life that’s inside. And yet it is very emphatically not a good book. Really, come to think of it, I don’t think I have ever read anything quite like Our Souls At Night – a book that is clearly literary, clearly well-written and carefully built. Big spacious lofts with nothing to fill them. The style and the repetitive, overindulgent nature of the way the story is told is a bit like one of those apartments that were en vogue in the early 2000s. It lacks the pull, the tension between dialogue and description that a well-executed short story can provide, but it doesn’t fill up the additional space well. In fact, I spent some time today browsing his collected stories, because something in the back of my head nagged me to do it, but no success. Too suburban and content for Richard Ford, the material could have suited Cheever’s suburban pen, too. I can appreciate the craftsmanship that went into writing, balancing and structuring the novel, but as I read it, I was not able to shake the feeling that what I was seeing was a too-large short story, a book that might, in the hands of Carver, Gallant or Salter turned into a sharp tale of an unusual relationship, of age and love. The quiet and orderly style has been perfected to the point of it becoming an object in and of itself in the novel. I do know that the book has drawn quite a bit of praise and that fact alone is a bit puzzling to me. I have not read any reviews of Kent Haruf’s novel Our Souls At Night but I suspect that whatever books I can pull as reference and context for it might not be appropriate. But maybe that could change?Īs Addie and Louis come to know each other better-their pleasures and their difficulties-a beautiful story of second chances unfolds, making Our Souls at Night the perfect final installment to this beloved writer's enduring contribution to American literature.Haruf, Kent (2015), Our Souls at Night, Knopf His daughter lives hours away, her son even farther, and Addie and Louis have long been living alone in empty houses, the nights so terribly lonely, especially with no one to talk with. Her husband died years ago, as did his wife, and in such a small town they naturally have known of each other for decades in fact, Addie was quite fond of Louis's wife. In the familiar setting of Holt, Colorado, home to all of Kent Haruf's inimitable fiction, Addie Moore pays an unexpected visit to a neighbor, Louis Waters. A spare yet eloquent, bittersweet yet inspiring story of a man and a woman who, in advanced age, come together to wrestle with the events of their lives and their hopes for the imminent future.
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