Eventide

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing...
Review: I had read Plainsong and was looking forward to a sequel or another book by Kent Haruf. I eagerly bought this one expecting a fine story such as Plainsong but was disappointed. The story was simple. The characters came and went in the story and I expected by the end we would see them develop. But most of them did not. The story was depressing but I read on hoping there would be redemption. I did like the writing, easy to read, and not tons of idle descriptions, but the story lacked something.

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: Every Bit As Wonderful as Plainsong
Review: I NEVER cry at books anymore...too hardened? Too cynical? Too old? I dunno, but I cried at "Eventide" while on a full plane to D.C.! THAT'S how affecting it is.

If you fell in love with the McPheron borthers in "Plainsong", as I did, then you will not want to miss this novel.

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: If I can't read it, I can't enjoy it...
Review: I'm afraid I found the decision to omit quotation marks around the dialogue in this book too much for me. Maybe out there there's a really great book that's capriciously decided to do without a random punctuation mark, but I'm going to have to give this one a pass -- it's just too distracting (and, frankly, it seems pretentious). I'm not sure what to think of an author who calls so much attention to the mechanics of the writing in a book that's not supposed to be avant-garde or experimental. It seems a bit perverse to put deliberate roadblocks in front of your readers. You might not consciously notice punctuation when it is there, but you sure miss it when it's gone.

Rating:
Summary: Neighbors Taking Care of Neighbors
Review: I've been longing to read more about the McPheron brothers, and finally, in EVENTIDE, I get to melt into their lives again. I love the new character, Rose, and I think she has a good heart. But the author, Kent Haruff, has the biggest and kindest heart of all to be able to make such ordinary people very extraordinary.

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: another excellent book
Review: Mr. Hauf has done it again and yes I have been waiting since reading Plainsong. The author has a gift of using words that makes me re read sentences and think, wow, how did you do that?!
I don't want to give the plot away to those who have not read it yet. But you will not be disappointed. Mr.Hauf touches us again with Raymond, Harold and Victoria. New community members are woven into the plot wonderfully. I did get disgusted at the lack of parenting of the Wallace's. good grief, some people should not have children. I would die, literally, before anyone hurt my children, especially in my own home.
I once again await Mr Hauf's next book.

Rating:
Summary: Lyrical and authentic
Review: Once again Kent Haruf displays the subtle language, the keenly observed character development and the uniquely western reticence of a true regional wordsmith. I find my Colorado and my small town portrayed with authenticity in both the characters and the place. The fine crafting of words renders clearly that spare environment of the Colorado plains and its people.