setryes.blogg.se - Our souls at night book club review

Now they both live alone, their houses empty of family, their quiet nights solitary. Addie Moore and Louis Waters have been neighbours for years. SOON TO BE A MOTION PICTURE Absolutely beautiful The Times Gripping and tender Publishers Weekly This is a love story.

From the Folio Prize-shortlisted author of Plainsong, Eventide and Benediction, a stunning novel about finding happiness.

My immediate reaction, though, right after finishing the final pages, is just this: Our Souls at Night is lovely, and should not be missed. This book really swept me up and moved me, and I’d like to page through it for a while longer before I return it to the library. Our Souls at Night is Kent Haruf’s final novel, as he passed away in 2014 at the age of 71. I’m sorry that I haven’t read more by this author, and I do intend to correct that. I read the author’s novel Plainsong years ago and remember that I ended up loving it for its stripped-down beauty. It’s simply a powerful book about the connection between two people who manage to find happiness and true connection at a point in their lives when everyone expects them to simply behave and then fade away. There’s nothing fancy about the characters, their speech patterns, or the story. The writing is spare, pared down to the essentials. This is a beautiful, elegant, graceful book.

It’s as though, after all they’ve experienced and all the ups and downs of their lives up to this point, they’re dispensing with the bullshit and getting right to what matters. They’ve been through a lot over the course of the years, and they talk to each other directly and openly, no hiding or subterfuge. Their speech, like their lives, is plain and unadorned. Our Souls at Night is a short book, under 200 pages, and much of it consists of dialogue between the two characters. Kent Haruf uses deceptively simple language to paint a gorgeous picture of the inner lives of common people. And from these nights, the two form an unusual intimacy, closer than most marriages, that seems like a true meeting of souls. In the night, they talk over their lives, their marriages, their children, the disappointments, the dreams, the pain and the joy.

They refuse to be ashamed, and they refuse to stop. Small town folks talk, of course, and people seek to create gossip and scandal, but Addie and Louis will have none of it. There will be no sneaking around.Īnd that’s really it. On the first night, Louis comes through the alley to Addie’s back door with his pajamas and toothbrush in a paper bag, but Addie tells him to come to the front door from now on, if he intends to continue. She wants someone to fall asleep with, to talk with in the dark, to make the nights a little less lonely. She asks him to come sleep with her at night. I wonder if you would come and sleep in the night with me. I wonder if you would consider coming to my house sometimes to sleep with me. One day, Addie shows up on Louis’s doorstep with a proposal. Both seem to lack real human connection in their lives, although they certainly have friends and acquaintances. And around the corner is her neighbor Louis Waters. In the small Colorado town of Holt, the setting for previous novels by Kent Haruf, Addie Moore lives alone. It’s hard to describe this small, lovely book and explain what makes it just so special - but I’ll try.