Plainsong

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Prose but Lacking and Incomplete
Review: This story hooked me from the very beginning and I read it in one day. I was driven to know more about these charactors and how their lives would turn out. Unfortunately, I was never given these answers. This story is more or less a brief glimpse into the lives of a group of people living in a small western town in Colordo and how their lives eventually interconnect. Very little is given on their backgrounds, who they are, why they behave as they do, etc. The only charactors that we are allowed some of their history are the McPheron Brothers. I wanted to know more about Tom Guthrie's life and why his boys were so solemn, why his wife couldn't get out of bed and what drove her to her actions, who was Maggie Jones, what about Victoria's mother, etc. I'm fine with a story leaving us to draw our own conclusions with some issues but not the entire work. The prose was beutiful and the charactors were interesting to a point but not enough was given to ever allow me to care about them. The expletive "GD" is extremely offensive to me and it was used way too much. Even once is too much for me. And what is it with authors not using quotation marks? Please give me quotations marks or I can't keep up with who is talking!

Rating:
Summary: Intruiging, and it touched my heart
Review: I know this book won awards and I have read the review of others who really liked it but I have to say that I found it lacking. It seemed very slow to get into anything (I guess kind of like the characters themselves). I had to fight to continue to read this novel until more than half way through. At that point the characters began to peak my interest and I guess there was a certain curiousity as to how things would turn out. Perhaps because I don't have any experience of a small town in the west I couldn't quite deal with the pace of the storyline. Most times when I finish a book I hate to leave the characters, I want to remain in their lives and continue to see where life takes them. I didn't really care about these folks and I'm not quite sure why. The story just didn't grab me.

Rating:
Summary: a very good book which I did not like
Review: The book tells a patch of lifetime of very different people. It turns out that their stories are connected to each other and the picture created is really a masterwork. The story is really plain and minimally told. This book teaches you about storytelling and about avoiding useless words. As it happens, the book does not have what I like most about books. It does not tell you about the characters. It only documents what they are doing. The author says nothing about their hopes, their dreams, not even their past. We do not learn a single thing about the people that fill this book, why they are what they are and what makes them decide what they decide. I would say it is a good book, as I would say Van Gogh did good paintig. But I wouldnt put a Van Gogh in my apartment because I simply dont LIKE them. So, before you decide to read this book find out, what you like about books. If it is the plot, you might like it. If it is the people, you might not like it. As I dont like it.

Rating:
Summary: Choppy and disjointed, poorly written, and just plain DUMB
Review: I read the entire book waiting for some lightbulb to come on that never did.

Improbable: A teenage girl living with two old men? Sounds like material for a porn site. She's placed there by her teacher? What sort of place is this that has no Child Welfare Agency??? It isn't the 1930's

I found this book on a rack at the local library under "Libraian's Choice". I'll be wary of anyone else's choices in the future!

Why is there no ZERO STAR rating?





Rating:
Summary: Endearing without being sentimental.
Review: Plainsong is the kind of book in which there are moving connections between 2 old bachelor brothers and a pregnant teenager; 2 young brothers and a lonely old woman; and in which even a one night stand is full of tenderness. The young brothers have a good father, but surprisingly this is the one relationship without much warmth. Plainsong is endearing without being sentimental, and all the characters are worth spending time with, especially the boys. Plainsong does not totally lack a hard edge, but the few mean personalities are movers only: the novel is never told from their perspective

Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Heartland Novel
Review: Plainsong is a wonderful book with a real American Heartland kind of voice. Without giving away much detail, it concerns the intertwining lives of a number of citizens of a small town in Colorado. I suggest this book to anyone who is a people watcher, anyone who loves small stories with big ideas; anyone who likes their novels filled with authentic atmosphere and finely crafted detail; and anyone who (like me) is cooped up in a city most of the time.

While not a traditional three act structure, Kent Haruf's plot is immediate and very real. I think a great measure of any plot is whether we care about what's at stake in the story. In this case, I found myself truly caring and appreciating the lives of the characters- actually worrying about them. Also, Haruf is a master at creating plot twists that are very natural (but you often can't see them coming) and yet convey the way life can sneak horrible catastrophes and amazing good luck into perfectly ordinary days.

Kent Haruf loves his characters and it shows. The main characters are created in loving detail. Each has his or her own way of talking, their own way of doing things. But even the minor characters have a vivid life of their own, whether it be an amiable drunk that shows up for just one scene at a bar or a terrified school girl delivering an oral report in history class. Even the bad guys, the mean characters in the book, come across as authentic people and not just evil cartoon characters.

In regard to way of talking- Haruf has created a wonderful (for lack of a better term) sort of Western Cowboy dialect for his characters that rings true to my ears. He's also very good at showing you what characters are thinking when they aren't talking. Almost none of his main characters are big time talkers and therefore, Haruf develops all kinds of other ways for them to communicate. In fact, Haruf brings us a vocabulary of silence: happy quiet, sad quiet, stunned quiet. It's an amazing thing.

Haruf is also a magician of environment. Basically, the story takes place over a little more than one year- all four seasons. And most of it takes place in the same small town so we wind up going back to the same places and Haruf ends up describing the same front yard, the same trees over and over again. In the hands of some writers, this might become dull (how many times do I want to see a description of the sky?), but Haruf pulls it off with grace and style. Because he describes how things change over time. He talks about the winter sky, summer sky and all the other skies in between. In Plainsong, it makes sense too, because the characters lives are governed, in many ways, by the season.

The story is interlaced with real conflicts, real things at stake, wonderful poignant moments of sadness and love, moments of rage and some great underplayed comedy.

I think there are a few tiny details that didn't quite work for me. I had a bit of a hard time with one of the main characters named Guthrie- a history teacher- but I had some trouble understanding what his motives were. And, another minor note, is that the story is very much about white America which makes sense I guess because maybe a small town in Colorado might be all white but, for example, my older Armenian relatives might not really get into it because it's so alien to their experiences. But these are very minor complaints (I gave this book 5 out of 5 stars)

So, I'd say buy this book. Take it on your next trip, read it on the crowded bus on your way to the office, read it during your Thanksgiving Holiday or at Christmas when it's freezing outside. I think you'll appreciate it.