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Summary: Excellent novel!
Review: Wow! Simple yet absolutely brilliant. I look forward to more novels from Kent Haruf.
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Summary: Pride & Prejudice in small town America
Review: This book is a beautiful albeit raw and rugged account of life in a small Colorado plain's town. Ironically, it's mirrored after the very town I grew up in. Even though now I live in LA, "Plainsong" transports me back to my youth. Kent Haruf taps into the essence of rural life and the people that live out there lives there. The genuineness he captures - whether the folk are "good" or "bad" is very real. And the amazing sense of community is the bond that still binds - even when one moves far away... This book moved me in a way that makes me proud of my roots... "Holt" is my hometown.
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Summary: A carefully carved jewel
Review: This is plain prose at its best. The characters develop and unfold in clear and precise ways. They are as real as the exquisitely drawn physical environment. Every description is tangible. Your sense of being in this place and of knowing these people is uncanny. Few books in recent years have had such a deep sense of real life to them.
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Summary: Simply wonderful
Review: A entrancing novel, I won't forget it and am now impatiently waiting for Kent Haruf's next book.
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Summary: A novel to share with friends that's a pleasure to read.
Review: The vulnerability of Ike and Bobby Guthrie and Victoria Roubideaux; the decency of the McPheron brothers and Maggie Jones; and Tom Guthrie, whose life seems to be slipping out of control just as he's challenged to hold it together--these are characters you hope for and hope with. The Plainsong orchestrated by Kent Haruf in this novel is a melody of the connections that draw us together for the right reasons, even when life seems poised against us. This is a novel to share with family and friends. I know I won't forget my visit to Holt, Colorado.
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Summary: A most enjoyable read
Review: I forgot about looking for "the plot" while reading this truly enjoyable, well described slice of western country life. These are places I've been and people I've met. This Advance Readers Edition was given to me by my favorite bookseller. I thank them and Mr. Haruf and look forward to reading more of his work!
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Summary: Gave me a feeling of home!
Review: I grew up in a small farming town in Oklahoma which is an awful lot like eastern Colorado. I actually do now live in Fort Collins, Colorado, which Kent Haruf refers to many times in "Eventide" (also excellent). The feel of this book is so familiar, it made me homesick. The characters make me ache they are so real and portray every day life with such truth. I feel for the farmers and the isolation and routine of running a ranch and the fatigue that comes from a hard days' work. I also relate to Victoria's situation of having lost her way and finally finding people who do love her. A most touching book!
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Summary: Great writing, but disappointing
Review: Really this book has four stories in it - some more interesting than the others. Definitely the most interesting story - and the one which keeps you reading - has to be about Victoria Roubidoux, a pregnant teenager who is taken in by two older, uneducated farmers who are also brothers who never married. This, in and of itself, was a leap of faith for me. I found it difficult to believe that two men in their 50s would take in a pregnant teenager who is not a relative and someone whom they'd never met before - especially in a small rural town. In fact, wouldn't a young girl be afraid of living with two single older men?While Haruf's writing in this book is very good, unfortunately it's the only good part of the book. I was prepared for a brilliant ending which would bring the four stories together, but the ending fell severely short of brilliant. A different ending would've made this an incredible book. Instead, I finished the book and thought to myself, "So?"
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Summary: A day in the life of a small town
Review: The combination of characters in PLAINSONG are indeed unique. As I started the novel I wondered how they would all mesh. In many ways, this book is a "day in the life" of Holt, Col. The author manages to look at one relatively short period of time, a little less than a year, and show what happened to the characters and how their lives changed. It's a period of change for all of them espcially Victoria and the two young boys, Bobby and Ike. In fact it is a period of change for all of the characters, Tom, Maggie and the two McPherson brothers.
I got the EVENTIDE out of the library. It apparently continues the story. I'm sure that I will read it, but I'm not sure if it had been better to leave the characters were they are at the end of PLAINSONG and let each reader speculate as to what happens to them; how this period of time and the changes they went through effected the rest of thief lives.
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Summary: Small town folks unfurl on you like a real pop-up book
Review: Kent Haruf's writing matches the title of the book so well you fall into a certain rhythm as you read. Every simple but masterful description of a character's mere appearance, or even the way he or she smokes a cigarette, adds to the mood of small town quiet desperation until the characters are walking around in your head like real people.
Haruf makes every nuance of their behavior fascinating and laden with gathering doom. Even the boys, Bobby & Ike, doing their weekly collections as paperboys for the Denver News are un-put-downable literature. You feel you don't want to miss a word or tiny action of their interchanges with the adults--both crass and kind-hearted--who make up their morning rounds.
These are people you can care about as their lives and secrets unfold. The writing transmits the emotional state of each character so vividly, you wonder how the author can reach into your living room and so deftly control how you feel as your eyes devour each page.
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