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Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf

 


Published: 2015,  Pan MacMillan

Genre: Fiction

Themes: Loneliness, widowhood, advancing years, family, small-town America

My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤

Our Souls at Night was Kent Haruf's final novel and I selected it to read because I very much enjoyed his earlier book, Plainsong (see link to review below).  Both the books are written in a very straightforward, plain style, and there are no wasted words, but somehow I felt I didn't engage with the book in quite the same way as I did with Plainsong.  

The book is divided into very short chapters that are sometimes only two to three pages long, and the story is told mostly through the use of dialogue.  The two main characters, Addie and Louis, have lived and bought up their families in the small American town of Holt and, now widowed in later life, they find themselves alone.  Addie is fed up with spending lonely nights with no-one to talk to for comfort, so one day she calls at Louis's door and proposes that they  spend their nights in bed together, just talking and sleeping next to each other.

After some consideration Louis agrees to this and every night he waits until it is dark and then walks to Addie's house with his pajamas and toothbrush in a brown paper bag.  Even though they have been near neighbours since their children were small, they have never really got to know each other, and as they share their past stories in the darkness they soon come to care deeply about each other.  

After they have been sleeping together for a while, Addie's six year old grandson Jamie comes to stay with her as his parents have separated and his mother has left the family home.  The boy is traumatised by his parents' constant arguing, and takes a while to settle down with Addie, but her consistently calm approach soon settles him down.

The book explores how Addie and Louis rely on routine and familiarity to provide structure in their lives, and how they have learnt from their past mistakes.  That seems to be a theme in Kent Haruf's writing as his characters are all flawed, just like the rest of us, but their kind hearts win through.

It is a fairly short book, and I found it ended rather quickly in a way that I didn't think was entirely consistent with the behaviours we had come to expect from the main characters.  Real life is not always neat and tidy, so it's not unreasonable to have plot lines that are left with question marks hanging over them, but as I put the book down I felt a little disappointed at how things turned out.

Despite what I think, it can't be all bad as the book was turned into a film starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda.  If you don't want to read the book you can watch the film on Netflix.


My review of Plainsong by Kent Haruf may be found at this link:

 https://dittybox.blogspot.com/2021/02/plainsong-by-kent-haruf.html


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