Plainsong (1999)

Spare. Rich. Elegant. Quiet. Lovely. Never mind that some of those adjectives seem to contradict each other. So many books want to show you a slice of life; this one succeeds. Haruf may not have written a revolutionary novel, but it is a deeply good and satisfying one.

This is one of those books that has themes — isolation, community, decency — without being about the themes. Instead, it is about the characters who, with perhaps one exception, seem lifted from everyday life. When you try to tell the story, they seem archetypical, maybe even trite: the pregnant teenager cast out by her mother, the kind-hearted teacher, the crotchety but kind old men. But it is Haruf's talent that they do not read that way. Instead of having that artificiality...instead of seeming fabricated solely for the purposes of build up through denouement...it felt like they had existed before the story ever started and had lives that went on long after the final page was done.

Very little happens in Plainsong. Very little gets resolved in Plainsong. But the word that keeps coming to mind is resonant. It's a word that I think is horribly overused when talking about books but, in this case, seems appropriate to me.

Perhaps the simplest way to express my feelings is that, upon finishing, I immediately ordered Eventide. ( )

Plainsong is about the people of a small town in Colorado, in about the 1980's. The central story is about a teenaged mother who finds a home with two older ranchers.

I give this book 5 stars for the writing style. Kent Haruf has a spare writing style, but it somehow creates very rich imagery and very real characters. A few words can be very powerful in the hands of this author.

But I was disappointed in the plot. There are several stories here, and only one of them comes to any kind of resolution. And the connection between the stories is loose at best. It was frustrating to come to end of the book, and not know why certain side storylines were included. ( )

"They watched her, the two old brothers in their work clothes, their iron gray hair short and stiff on their uncombed heads, the knees of their pants baggy. They said nothing."


This award-winning, character-driven tale weaves three stories into the fictional town of Holt, located in the high plains country of eastern Colorado. The lives of two old bachelor farmers, a pregnant teenager, and a single father with two young sons, all share a story of loneliness and landscape recorded in breathless prose.

A graceful, quiet yet powerful book. It is a study of small town life, told through several characters in alternating chapters. There is nothing new here -- just everyday lives with the usual problems. Some people have more good than bad in them, some have more bad than good, and a lot of people just don't know how to balance any of that. The crusty old bachelor brother farmers in particular were wonderful characters.
Haruf has an extraordinary ability to create characters that speak directly from the pages. Not schmaltzy. Just lovely. Pure storywriting. ( )

Ordinary people. None of them famous, rich, or powerful. When I read this work, I experienced their lives, saw what they saw. While I could anticipate their mistakes and missteps, I could understand why they did what they did, and feel their pain.

Even down to the level of horses and cows on the ranches and farms of the Colorado community in this novel, I felt what they felt -- subtly, but effectively.

Not a great book, perhaps. But a very good book. ( )