Rating: 
Summary: A must read!
Review: I hadn't really expected much of Plainsong on picking it up at the libray - not my usual type of book. However, on starting to read, I was unable to put it down without finishing it. I have to say this is the best novel I have read this year, that from an avid reader!
Rating:
Summary: Modest and lovely
Review: The characters are drawn with such simplicity. What a read. It tugs at your heartstrings ... but it's never cloying. Tugs in a good way. Okay, I cried through the last third of the book. Big loud boo hoos. I was glad no one was home. Read this.
Rating:
Summary: I loved this touching, tender book
Review: I had read more than a few glowing reviews of this book and was hoping that it would live up to its reputation. Thank goodness I wasn't disappointed. I had a difficult time trying to explain to other people exactly what made me put this book in my "top 10" favorites, but I believe that it was the fundamental "true-ness" of it. Several unpleasant things happen during the course of the story -- you will see just what people are capable of doing -- and yet Haruf shows us the inherent goodness that (many) ordinary, everyday people have and share with others. I laughed out loud at some of the dialog but my husband was perplexed to find me weeping towards the end of the novel. He said, "I thought this was a laughing book." It is both things. (And in case you were wondering, the crying was the sort that you do when you see something beautiful and not the sort from an unhappy ending.)
Rating: 
Summary: A well written book...
Review: I believe this book was nominated for an award or two, and it is well written and easy to read in a sitting or two. The story line is familiar--life in a small town in a rural setting. Most of us live in urban areas these days, but many have parents or grandparents who lived in small towns, or can imagine life in a place where everyone knows everyone. Any number of books including murder mysteries are set in towns or villages. This is a refreshing book because the characters are real but not psychotic. They all have too much going on in their own lives to meddle with others or murder a neighbor. Haruf depicts the day to day struggle--to get out of bed, to get to work, to do your job, to find love. You come to care about his characters, particularly Maggie Jones the school teacher who brings people together. It is Maggie who understands the needs of the McPheron brothers, Vitoria Roubideaux, and Tom Guthrie. She isn't a do-good Mrs. Fix-it either, just a kindly person who cares enough to make a useful suggestion, lend a helping hand, or offer a word of encouragement. In the end, all the characters whose lives have been touched by Maggie's simple grace have formed a better life for themselves. My only criticism of the book is that it lacks a sense of connectedness with the setting. The characterization is strong and the plot is straightforward, but I did not feel "present" in the story. I had the sense I was moving underwater and only vaguely comprehended my surroundings. It's the feeling I've had when coming out from under general anesthesia. I could not latch onto the story the same way I did with Jane Smiley's "Thousand Acres" where I could almost see and touch and smell the land. I sent my 85-year old Aunt (retired school teacher and high school counselor who lives in rural Wisconsin) the audio version of the book and she thoroughly enjoyed it. She said it sounded "real" to her and Victoria reminded her of any number of girls she had known while she was teaching.
Rating: 
Summary: Quick read, believable, mildly gratifying
Review: This book reads quickly. It would be good for reading on an airplane. The story is extremely believable but there were few surprises and little character depth. Several scenes do stick in my mind: the girl and the two guys, the kidnapping of the two boys, and the autopsy of the horse. However, these were insufficient to make this book a great read. I compare this book to Barbara Kingsolver's or T. Coraghessan Boyle's or Comac McCathy's and it falls short. Those writers are better (at least based upon this one book).
Rating:
Summary: An explosion of every sunrise
Review: that has graced every horizon upon which I have stood. Characters who made me laugh at their beauty and weep at their tragedy. If you don't care about these people you need an EKG. Words sculpted with such economy its as though they wrote themselves. And I thank Mr. Haurf for the reunion. To be reaquainted with old friends and associates and someone I thought I had lost forever. That child within me.
Rating:
Summary: Simply Wonderful
Review: Haruf's composition is make of unadorned prose and characters whose lives reflect and move through each other and yet are each vivid and singular. Unmediated even to the absence of quotation marks, tales of family, ritual, life cycles happen on the page as shapely and exhilarating art.
Rating:
Summary: A warm, realistic novel.
Review: Kent Haruf's Plainsong is set in Denver and tells of a father's increasing alienation from his two boys after his wife dies, and a teenage girl's pregnancy and outcast condition which brings them together. Small town life and limited personal concerns blend in this warm and realistic novel of sets of lives entwined by circumstance. Diane C. Donovan Reviewer
Rating: 
Summary: Novel for summer time reading
Review: This story takes place in the Eastern plains of Colorado's farmland. There is Tom Guthrie and his two sons, who have been abandoned by his wife and their mother. And Victoria Roubideaux, a pregnant teenager, who is abandoned by her mother. They are able to form an extended family thru the love and generiosity of Maggie Jones and the McPheron brothers, 2 elderly bachelor farmers. It is a fast paced, warm hearted story of the fragilities, desires and determination of the human spirit.
Rating:
Summary: Not PLain at All!
Review: This book is a great novel and I loved it! It took me a while to read because I got into it so much that I had to stop, but when it was over, I wanted to read more about the creative characters that Kent HAruf made up. It was a great book, as are Haruf's other books (The Tie that Binds, and Where You Once Belonged.) When you read this book, look for eight main characters that make up Kent Haruf's wonderful, compelling Plainsong!
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