![]() "I've done that too long - all my life," Addie continues. "I made up my mind I'm not going to pay attention to what people think," Addie says to Louis, who gradually comes around to Addie's way of thinking, despite initial concern about Holt's gossips. Like the 77-year-old Dad - like, perhaps, the dying Haruf - Addie and Louis have reached a point where they'd like to think they care less than they once did about how their behavior goes down within the small town where they live. Set in 2014 in Holt - the small, fictional town on the eastern Colorado plains where most of Haruf's stories unfold - "Our Souls at Night" reads like a coda to "Benediction," which revolves around Dad Lewis, the dying owner of a hardware store looking back over his life. That proposition gets made on the third page of Kent Haruf's "Our Souls at Night," the novel Haruf completed just before dying last November at 71. Haruf lived with his wife, Cathy, in Salida, Colorado, with their three daughters."I wonder if you would consider coming to my house sometimes to sleep with me." Holt is loosely based on Yuma, Colorado, an early residence of Haruf in the 1980s. In 2006, Haruf was awarded the Dos Passos Prize for Literature.Īll of his novels are set in the fictional town of Holt, Colorado. His novel, The Tie That Binds, received a Whiting Foundation Award and a special citation from the Pen/Hemingway Foundation. Plainsong was also a finalist for the 1999 National Book Award. Haruf is the author of Plainsong, which received the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Maria Thomas Award in Fiction, and The New Yorker Book Award. For two years, he taught English in Turkey with the Peace Corps and his other jobs have included a chicken farm in Colorado, a construction site in Wyoming, a rehabilitation hospital in Colorado, a hospital in Arizona, a library in Iowa, an alternative high school in Wisconsin, and universities in Nebraska and Illinois. He received his Bachelors of Arts in literature from Nebraska Wesleyan University in 1965 and his Masters of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1973. I highly recommend you put this book on your “To Read” pile for the summer. OUR SOULS AT NIGHT packs a lot of though-provoking messages into one small book: it’s never to late in life to make connections and establish relationships, we can find happiness is simple things like conversations, and we really shouldn’t care what other people think of us if what we are doing makes us happy. Addie, Louis, Jamie, and Bonney the dog have a wonderful summer and all four of them find comfort and solace in their little group. Addie and Louis gradually establish a routine with the boy, shower him with love and attention, and adopt a shelter dog for him. ![]() Jamie’s parents are in the middle of a separation and poor Jamie has been cast off to live with his grandmother for the summer when Jamie is dropped off at Addie’s home is upset and lonely. However, will Addie and Louis also be able to dismiss the opinions of their grown children who also get wind of their “relationship” and don’t approve of it?Īddie’s grandson, Jamie, also comes to spend the summer with Addie and Louis. Addie and Louis are happier spending time with one another than they have ever been in their lives and they are no longer lonely. The stance that they take, Addie in particular, against the nosy neighbors is that they don’t care what other people think anymore. The small town in Colorado in which Addie and Louis live start to gossip about the pair because people see Louis walking over to Addie’s house every night. Eventually they start holding hands as they communicate in the dark. They slowly get to know intimate details about each other’s past lives. They talk in the dark about their respective deceased spouses. She is lonely at night and instead of taking sleeping pills Addie would rather have a companion to talk to in the dark to help lull her to sleep.Īddie and Louis are awkward at first in a very sweet and gentle way. But there is nothing sexual or indecent about her suggestion. Since he also lives alone, Addie wants him to come over to her house at night and sleep with her and talk to her in the dark. Addie, a septuagenarian who has been widowed for years, walks over to her neighbor Louis and makes a proposition to him. This title is a brief yet beautiful read that took me by surprise. But this book piqued my interest enough for me to buy it on my own anyway. Sometimes bloggers do get rejected when they request review copies. Knopf did not let me have access to this title when I requested it on Edelweiss. ![]()
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