Our Souls at Night

A few years ago I read and admired Plainsong. I admired the writing: not a wasted word, not a superfluous word in it. It's a simple story about ordinary people and their ordinary lives. At the time I had a great pile of other books on the bedside table, so I passed on without further ado. I didn't even register consciously the name of the author. 

Now I have. The author was Kent Haruf. I was intrigued about the provenance of his family name until I discovered in his obituary that it is the Americanized spelling of a German name which challenged many who saw it written but couldn't pronounce it correctly. He was an eminent writer, winner of a Wallace Stegner Award, a PEN-Hemingway Award among other distinctions. His final book, published in 2015 just after his death aged 71, is Our Souls at Night. This is a beautiful little book, prose like poetry, a keeper that will go on the shelves with other books I treasure. The story is set in Holt, the fictional Colorado town where all Kent Haruf's novels are set - all of which I now feel impelled to read. Our Souls at Night  describes a year or so late in the life of Addie Moore, an elderly widow who calls on her neighbour Louis Waters and invites him into her bed, not for what my beloved Wendy called wee romps, but for company, for pillow talk, and as she gets to know him better, to hold her hand as she drifts off to sleep. In that small town where everyone knew everyone else, they had known each other all their lives. Some are scandalized by the behaviour of this elderly pair, some are envious, some perhaps admire Addie and Louis.  Louis's wife had been Addie's good friend until her death from cancer. Addie's son Gene's marriage is breaking up and her 6-year old grandson Jamie comes to stay. He cries himself to sleep, so he too shares Addie's king-size bed. Louis gets Jamie a dog. After a few months, Gene and his wife try again to save their marriage; Jamie and the dog go home. Gene is ashamed about his mother Addie's 'immoral' relationship with Louis; he moves  her to an assisted living residence. After that Addie and Louis have occasional, secretive phone conversations, secretive because Gene disapproves. This is a simple, commonplace story about ordinary people, joyful and sad like life itself. Kent Haruf wrote only six small novels: it's a slender portfolio; but if each is as perfectly polished as this, there will be much pleasure in store when I read all of them.