Eventide

Rating:
Summary: A Worthy Successor to the Award-Winning Plainsong
Review: For a second time the residents of Holt, Colorado, have been brought to life by the immense talents of author Kent Haruf. Five years ago, Haruf first introduced the denizens of this rural western community to the world. That novel, PLAINSONG, became an award-winning novel, a finalist for the National Book Award, and recently a "Hallmark Hall of Fame" television movie. EVENTIDE is Haruf's return visit to Holt, an opportunity for the reader to follow the lives of many of the characters first introduced in PLAINSONG and to meet other residents of the community as well.

The primary focus of EVENTIDE is on the lives of a unique family unit that found its creation in the pages of PLAINSONG. Her biological family abandoned Victoria Roubideaux when the high school student became pregnant. Through the efforts of one of her teachers, Maggie Jones, Victoria moves to the farm of Harold and Raymond McPheron, bachelor brothers residing on their cattle ranch 17 miles outside of Holt. The development of the relationship between Victoria and the McPherons was a major theme of the PLAINSONG saga.

As EVENTIDE opens, Victoria and her two-year-old daughter Katie, having lived on the McPheron farm since birth, are preparing to face a new challenge. Mother and daughter will be moving to Fort Collins and Victoria will be a freshman in college. The brothers, who two years ago could never contemplate life with a woman and child, must now face the absence of what has become their family. It will be a difficult test.

Shortly after Victoria departs, tragedy visits the McPheron farm. A serious accident kills Harold and severely injures Raymond. In simple and unadorned language Haruf portrays Raymond's struggle to begin a new life. Raymond is a noble and old-fashioned man seeking to survive in a modern and complex society that exists even in rural Colorado. In one particularly touching moment, Raymond, now courting, purchases a car battery for his female friend. In the hands of Kent Haruf, the incident is beautifully portrayed.

Victoria and the McPherons are the main characters of EVENTIDE but certainly not its only characters. Haruf shows a remarkable talent in viewing the world through the eyes of children. IN PLAINSONG it was the sons of Tom Guthrie. In EVENTIDE it is eleven-year old DJ Kephart, an orphan who is taking care of his grandfather. Viewing the world through the eyes of children reminds us all of the fragile nature of hopes and dreams. Often, it can be a bleak world.

Other residents of Holt also appear. Luther and Betty Wallace and their children are kept together as a family unit by social worker Rose Tyler. The lives of many citizens of Holt intertwine, and Haruf keeps the story moving towards a conclusion that, while not complete, brings closure to some of the characters. Perhaps Haruf is contemplating a Holt, Colorado trilogy of novels.

There is an elegant simplicity and beauty in the writing of Kent Haruf. When he describes a subzero Colorado winter evening, the reader reaches for a sweater. When his characters are happy, the reader rejoices; when they face misfortune, the reader shares their angst. Few writers can evoke that response in a novel. EVENTIDE is a worthy successor to the award-winning PLAINSONG. If you have not done so, read PLAINSONG first. More than the words of any review, it will inspire you to read EVENTIDE.

--- Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman

Rating:
Summary: spare and beautiful
Review: Haruf's style aptly fits the setting of this remarkable follow-up to Plainsong. His lack of quotation marks drew me into the interaction between characters without setting the dialogue apart. You get used to it after a couple pages. If you want a plot that hits you over the head rather than speaks to your heart, this isn't for you. The beauty lies in Haruf's amazing ability to say so much in so little, yet paint the setting and characters and plot so vividly. I read this book in one day because I couldn't wait to get back to the characters and the place. Working in a library, I read and see a lot of books. I am always looking for a book that captures me and transports me and this one did just that. I cried. I laughed. And most of all I cared. Incredible and superb writing which even surpasses Plainsong.

Rating:
Summary: Stellar Sequel
Review: Having read and LOVED, "Plainsong" I eagerly purchased "Eventide." Though much grittier and darker than it's predecessor, this book offering is important. As a huge fan of Haruf, this title seemed more in keeping with "Where He Once Belonged" and "The Tides That Bind" in it's less than perfect characterizations. Some of "Eventide's" personalaties border on pathetic, but is it not that way in life? In my 49 years of living in small towns in Montana and Wyoming, I certainly have met them all. Haruf does offer us hope through the "McPheron's" "Victoria and Katie," "Rose Tyler," and others that stumble, rising again from their self-inflicted ashes. That we must reside among the unreedemable is truth. The idiom that "truth hurts" applies here, but truth also educates, affects change, and defuncts one's prejudices and judgements. I cried often thoughtout, but I also questioned, pondered, and meditated. Bravo, to Mr. Haruf for daring to tear we readers from our comfort zones, urging compassion, understanding, and in some instances, action. Bravo, that through these characters we may affect change in our lives and those around us, rather than residing in our complacent ignorance. Bravo, that Mr. Haruf dared to challenge; in challenge, only, can we meet victory.

Bravo, bravo, bravo!

Rating:
Summary: Real life and real people--
Review: I am seldom moved to write a review of a book. Eventide, however, so grabbed me that I wanted to comment. The characters in this book are so genuine and their situations so true to life that you want the book to go on and on. After I finish a book I usually immediately pick up another. I could not do that after Eventide. I wanted to take some time and reflect on the lives of the characters and the events that shaped them. If you like glamour and glitz this is not the book for you, but if you like to read of real people facing real life you will love Eventide.

Rating:
Summary: Fabulous
Review: I haven't read Kent Haruf's earlier book, and I was slightly worried that I would need to catch up on his characters. Have no fear. Evensong is fully realized. The characters and their relationships to each other and where they live ring completely true. All of the characters are rounded and complex; you never feel that the author has tossed off a stereotype for lack of imagination. You KNOW these people. It's that good.

I highly recommend this book. Reading it will make you feel good without feeling emotionally manipulated.

Rating:
Summary: Just To Make Things a Little Brighter, For a Little While
Review: I thought Kent Haruf's previous book, PLAINSONG, was an absolute masterpiece, and, while I think EVENTIDE is excellent, I don't think it's quite the masterpiece that PLAINSONG is.

EVENTIDE takes place in Holt County on the plains of western Colorado and, although it involves several families and many characters, EVENTIDE centers around Harold and Raymond McPheron, two crusty, quirky ranchers who show their soft side when (in PLAINSONG) they take in pregnant Victoria Robideaux. Now, two years later, Victoria and her daughter, Katie, are leaving the McPheron's so Victoria can attend college and the McPheron brothers, crusty as they are, are unhappy about it and feel adrift.

Not too far from the Mc Pheron ranch live Luther and Betty Wallace, mentally troubled parents who struggle to hold life together with the aid of their social worker, Rose Tyler. Adding to their troubles is Hoyt Raines, Betty's abusive uncle. While despicable, Hoyt almost rescues this book. Although it seems like every citizen of Holt County is haunted by demons, most of them are haunted by inner demons; at heart they really aren't bad people at all. Hoyt, however, is a violent, outward menace and I think EVENTIDE needed him to keep the book from lapsing into sentimentality or wistfulness.

DJ Gephardt, a young orphan who has to care for the ageing grandfather with whom he lives is another quietly tragic figure as is Mary Wells, a woman whose husband has left her and their little girls with almost nothing. To say life is hard for the people in Holt County is almost an understatement, but if one reads a little deeper, one can see that the problems that beset the denizens of Holt County are the problems that beset all of us, everywhere, at some time or another.

EVENTIDE is more about the struggle to survive than about tragedy; it never slips into the melodramatic. And there are kind people in this book, people ready and willing to help one another, to become part of a family and a life they really don't have to become part of, but do, just to make things a little brighter, for a little while. You get the idea that everything would be okay for all of these people if only all of them would simply "connect."

Haruf's prose is striking for its spare, clean and unadorned qualities. I don't particularly like this "Hemingwayesque" leanness, but it certainly "fit" this novel perfectly and that's the important thing. In fact, I think if Haruf would have written the novel any other way, it would have failed miserably.

EVENTIDE is a book about "forgotten" Americans; people many others would like to deny exist. They fact is, they do exist, and in far greater numbers than most people would ever admit. All one has to do to find them is look around.

There are some unanswered questions in EVENTIDE, some loose narrative threads, but I didn't mind this. I don't need to be provided with a neat and tidy denouement from every book I read. Some books require it, some don't. EVENTIDE, I think, didn't.

I think EVENTIDE will be too "quiet" for many readers, which is really a shame, because the book has so much to offer. It definitely leaves a lasting, and unsettling, impression. EVENTIDE is, I think, an excellent book, but not quite up to the masterpiece quality of PLAINSONG. PLAINSONG is definitely a five-star book; I think EVENTIDE merits a solid four and one-half stars.

Rating:
Summary: I know these people!
Review: In Sara Nelson's book SO MANY BOOKS, SO LITTLE TIME, the author tells us she could not relate to PLAINSONG, that she put the book aside in favor of other books she'd rather read. How could it be, I wondered, that this national reviewer could scorn one of the best novels I've read in the last ten years?

I would assume that once again Nelson will be less than enthusiastic about the sequel. EVENTIDE is one slow-moving story. Haruf fashions scenes where a welfare couple shops for TV dinners at a supermarket. In another, a boy and girl clean out an old garden shed and play Monopoly. In yet another, the McPheron brothers sell their steers at an auction. I don't know how he does it, but Haruf makes these seemingly mundane scenes work. I guess it's because of the heart-tugging humanity they express. We know these people; we see ourselves in them.

I will admit it took me a while to warm to this book. Tom Guthrie and his boys are minor characters for one thing, and as a former teacher, I could relate to him. Right around page ninety or so, this becomes Raymond McPheron's book and you have to be a heartless jerk not to want to hang around with such a mensch. Raymond and Harold are having a hard time dealing with the loss of Victoria and her daughter Katie, who've gone off to college.

Haruf's style is quite spare, but there are hints of Faulkner and Hemingway. Haruf does for Holt, Colorado, what Faulkner did for Yoknapatawpha County. As in the Faulkner novels, the characters are a motley crew. There's a clueless welfare couple who can't seem to do anything right. DJ Kephart, a pre-teen version of Raymond, shepherds his grandfather through pneumonia and stands up for a woman in distress. The welfare couple's uncle is a veritable Simon Legree.

Haruf has the same lyrical cadence as Hemingway. Listen to this: "They left the corrals and walked across the gravel drive to the house and porch where they slapped the dust off their jeans and stomped their boots and went inside and took off their warm jackets and hats, and Raymond washed his hands and face at the sink and started to cook at the old enameled stove." Hemingway, right?

For whatever reason, Haruf also disdains quotation and question marks, and he will often begin a scene without making it clear whose viewpoint it is, leaving it to the reader to figure it out from context clues. The ending will also be disappointing for some. It fades out and lots of the threads are left unresolved, just as in real life.

Eventide is a blue-collar book with blue-collar characters and blue-collar sensibilities and definitely worth your time and money.

Rating:
Summary: Blue Yardlights Shining from the Tall Poles
Review: Kent Haruf's novels contain large lessons. His first novel, The Tie That Binds, was about duty and its costs, and his best known novel, Plainsong, was about transcending loneliness. Eventide is about courage and its sniveling evil twin, cowardice.

Haruf takes us back to the small town of Holt, Colorado -- a complicated but true place where kindness and cruelty exist side by side in the same proportions (or should I say disproportions) as the rest of the outside world. Here we find familiar characters from Plainsong, most notably the kind Maggie Jones, the ever capable Tom Guthrie, the stoic and funny McPheron brothers, and their triumphant ward, Victoria Roubidoux. And while they provide the comfortable base on which this new story is built, they are joined in Eventide by equally intriguing characters, such as Mary Wells, an abandoned mother, Rose Tyler, a dedicated social worker, and especially the courageous DJ Kephart, an 11-year old boy who has never gotten a break in his brief life but who transcends all with character and a moral strength that comes from some unknown place.

Courage is found throughout Holt. Raymond McPheron's quiet courage overcomes the loss of "his dead brother, gone on ahead". Mary Wells abandons self-pity to forge a new life and DJ forges ahead and literally strikes out at the evil he sees around him. Rose Tyler carries her burdens with resolve and strength and her wards, Joy Rae and Richie Wallace, the neglected children of pathetic losers, simply survive.

Unfortunately, where courage resides, cowardice lurks. Haruf's characterizations of Luther and Betty Wallace, the slothful welfare couple, and their vile relative, Hoyt Raines, are brilliant. Our feelings toward them are contradictory - on one level we pity them and their sad predicaments but on the other one we loathe them for their laziness and repeated bad choices.

In the end, the courage that resounds through the novel is the ability to learn from one's mistakes. As Raymond says as he shrugs off a temporary farm hand's apology for a mistake, "That happens. You just don't have to do it twice. Pay attention next time and it'll be alright. Let's go have us some breakfast." The triumphant characters of Eventide have all made mistakes but have learned from them; the losers in Eventide keep making the same mistakes over and over again.

As the novel ends, the "blue yardlights shining from the tall poles" that Raymond and Rose see on the outskirts of Holt are the simple acts of courage and kindness that light the darkness.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Novel
Review: This is a remarkable novel. By its end the characters have become friends (though there are a few that you might want to avoid). But each character is as real as any real person I've known. Haruf creates small town Plains life in ways no other writer has. There's a truth, a beauty and a resonance to his writing that mirrors the landscape of the high plains. The people sound right, the land looks real and life in Holt feels as though you had just dropped in. You know Haruf knows this place and and has lived with these people, and you trust him as you would a very good friend. He is neither condescending nor sentimental, it's just the news, and the news, though very difficult from time to time, is still the news of caring people trying to care for each other. The story, like Plainsong, keeps you nervously turning pages and the beauty of the writing slows you down. I'm waiting for the next installment - and the thought of waiting another four years or so simply sends me back to Plainsong.

Rating:
Summary: Fabulous sequel
Review: This is an excellent followup to "Plainsong". Both "Eventide" and "Plainsong" are not the typical books that I am used to reading. I usually choose books where there is at least one character that I can relate to. This book takes place in Holt, Colorado and a lot of the characters are poor and have had more than their share of grief in their lives. Kent Haruf writes so well that I could not put this book down. I cried during the sad parts and felt chills running through me during the happy scenes. Even though I couldn't personally relate to any of the characters I still absolutely loved this book. His writing is unique and I am hoping and praying that there is another sequel in the works. Love this book and this author!