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443. Plainsong

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Kent Haruf

Genre:   Fiction

301 pages, published August 22, 2000

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Plainsong tells the story of several residents of Holt, a small town in the high plains of rural Colorado.  We meet a high school teacher who is left to raise his two young boys alone, a teenage girl who is kicked out by her mother when she finds herself pregnant and taken in by two elderly, bachelor brothers who raise cattle and a town bully with a proclivity for evil.

Quotes 

“A girl is different. They want things. They need things on a regular schedule. Why, a girl’s got purposes you and me can’t even imagine. They got ideas in their heads you and me can’t even suppose.”

 

“You’re going to die some day without ever having had enough trouble in your life. Not of the right kind anyway.”

 

“You understand? If you can read you can cook. You can always feed yourselves. You remember that.”

 

“Don’t you have any scars? Inside. Do you? Of course. You don’t act like it. I don’t intend to. It doesn’t do much good, does it?”

 

“Why hell, look at us. Old men alone. Decrepit old bachelors out here in the country seventeen miles from the closest town which don’t amount to much of a good goddamn even when you get there. Think of us. Crotchety and ignorant. Lonesome. Independent. Set in all our ways. How you going to change now at this age of life?  I can’t say, Raymond said. But I’m going to. That’s what I know.”

 

“You’re not talking to her, Maggie Jones said. You and Raymond don’t talk like you should to that girl. Women want to hear some conversation in the evening. We don’t think that’s too much to ask. We’re willing to put up with a lot from you men, but in the evening we want to hear some talking. We want to have a little conversation in the house.”

 

My Take

Having previously read and enjoyed Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf, I had high hopes for Plainsong.  While Plainsong is not quite as good as Our Souls, it is still a very good read and the author has some interesting insights into the human condition.  I especially enjoyed the story of two elderly brothers who run a remote ranch and take in a pregnant teenage girl who brings out the best in them.

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409. Our Souls at Night

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Terra McKinish

Author:   Kent Haruf

Genre:   Fiction, Romance

179 pages, published May 26, 2015

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

In the small town of Holt, Colorado, widow Addie Moore pays an unexpected visit to her neighbor and widower Louis Waters to ask him is whether he would be interested spending time with her in her bed so they can each have someone to talk with.  While initially surprised, Louis agrees to try it out.  They share with each other their troubled pasts, their youthful aspirations and middle-age disappointments and compromises.  They both are happy to at last feel understood by another person.  However, their unusual arrangement results in the disapproval of their children, threatening the close bond they had formed.

Quotes 

“Who does ever get what they want? It doesn’t seem to happen to many of us if any at all. It’s always two people bumping against each other blindly, acting out old ideas and dreams and mistaken understandings.”

 

“I do love this physical world. I love this physical life with you. And the air and the country. The backyard, the gravel in the back alley. The grass. The cool nights. Lying in bed talking with you in the dark.”

 

“Who would have thought at this time in our lives that we’d still have something like this. That it turns out we’re not finished with changes and excitements. And not all dried up in body and spirit.”

 

“I made up my mind I’m not going to pay attention to what people think. I’ve done that too long—all my life. I’m not going to live that way anymore.”

 

“But we didn’t know anything in our twenties when we were first married. It was all just instinct and the patterns we’d grown up with.”

 

“Who would have thought at this time in our lives that we’d still have something like this.”

 

“Not like I was. I’ve come to believe in some kind of afterlife. A return to our true selves, a spirit self. We’re just in this physical body till we go back to spirit.”

 

My Take

Although it is a short book, Our Souls at Night has a big impact.  A beautiful story of a man and woman and their late in life attempt to find happiness and honesty.  A simply told, thoughtful and touching book.

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