Kent Haruf - Our Souls At Night

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Exceptionally good

I thought this short novel was outstandingly good. I hadn't heard of Kent Haruf before (although it seems as though I ought to have!) but I thought that if people like Peter Carey, Anne Tyler and Roddy Doyle think he's brilliant then he should be worth a look. He most certainly was.

A brief synopsis doesn't sound great: two elderly people, Louis and Addie, both long-term residents of a small Colorado town and both widowed for some years, start a relationship, refuse to be cowed by the consequent gossip, begin to flourish emotionally, and are further fulfilled by the arrival of a young grandson to stay... It just sounds cliché-ed, patronising and sickeningly twee, but it's none of those things. Far from it; the book is quietly humane and unsentimental, and genuinely tender in places. It is written in seemingly simple prose that is actually something very special and I found the whole thing memorable and very affecting. The writing has a lovely cadence about it somehow, apparently describing simple things in simple words. The book is also unusually short but it is still far more profound and far more poetic than several over-long, self-consciously "lyrical" books I've read.

This is a book about maturity, fulfilment, regret, the nature of love...and lots of other things. Haruf creates wholly believable characters and shows remarkable insight and compassion in his treatment of them. He writes in quiet, straightforward prose and we get almost no account of the characters' internal state, but everything is laid out beautifully in simple speech and unshowy description. I found it mesmerising and completely gripping; he seems to be saying simple things in simple words but there is real profundity here, delivered in a lovely, almost poetic cadence.

Don't look for lots of action or major plot twists (although important things do happen). This book is concerned with things like how our pasts affect us both in our own behaviour and in how others behave toward us, the pleasure of ordinary things and activities, and the importance and fulfilment of openness and friendship. I think it is truly exceptional and I can recommend it very warmly.