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Loading... Eventide (original 2004; edition 2005)by Kent Haruf
Work InformationEventide by Kent Haruf (2004)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This picks up the thread of Victoria Robideuax and her infant daughter, the McPheron brothers, and to some extent, Tom Guthrie where we left them at the end of Plainsong. It also gives us new characters with intertwining tales of poverty, struggle, love and despair. It is all so perfect, so real and true...unsentimental but compassionate portraits of people we all might know, or think we do. ( ) Haruf returns to the locale and many of the characters of "Plainsong", with a still powerful but less engaging story in this semi-sequel. There's really no plot arc here, just a series of scenes, the most powerful involving Raymond and Harold McPheron. This feels like the middle volume of a trilogy, with all the weaknesses that so often implies. Sequel to Plainsong and set in the same small town of Holt, Colorado, this book continues the story of residents we have come to know in the first book. It is character driven, slow paced, and written in sparse poignant prose. We revisit the McPheron brothers and social worker Rose Tyler. The young woman the brothers took in, Victoria, goes off to college. There are a few new stories of a people we had not met before, such as Luther and Betty Wallace and their two children, living in poverty. An alcoholic uncle moves in with them and wreaks havoc with their lives. There is no plot to tie everything together, other than these characters are living in the same community and surrounding area. It is about ordinary people living their (mostly unhappy) lives. People come and go. They live and die. The overall tone is one of melancholy. It is difficult for me to read about child abuse, so I did not like this one quite as much as Plainsong. The story of Holt, Colorado continues, and again is told in short episodic vignettes in quiet, simple prose. Victoria and Harold and Raymond are back in this book, but other characters are new, including Luther and Betty June living in a trailer with their children who are being abused by Betty June's Uncle Hoyt, as well as their social worker Rose. Again, a quiet read, though some evil things are going on under a veneer of calm. 3 1/2 stars First line: "They came up from the horse barn in the slanted light of early morning." Last line: "And still in the room they say together quietly, the old man with his arm around the kind woman, waiting for what would come." Is contained inAwardsDistinctions
One of the most beloved novels in recent years,Plainsongwas a best-seller from coast to coast—and now Kent Haruf returns to the High Plains community of Holt, Colorado, with a story of even more masterful authority. When the McPheron brothers see Victoria Roubideaux, the single mother they’d taken in, move from their ranch to begin college, an emptiness opens before them—and for many other townspeople it also promises to be a long, hard winter. A young boy living alone with his grandfather helps out a neighbor whose husband, off in Alaska, suddenly isn’t coming home, leaving her to raise their two daughters. At school the children of a disabled couple suffer indignities that their parents know all too well in their own lives, with only a social worker to look after them and a violent relative to endanger them further. But in a small town a great many people encounter one another frequently, often surprisingly, and destinies soon become entwined—for good and for ill—as they confront events that sorely test the limits of their resilience and means, with no refuge available except what their own character and that of others afford them. Spring eventually does reach across the land, and how the people ofEventideget there makes for an engrossing, profoundly moving novel rich in the wisdom, humor, and humanity for which Kent Haruf is justly acclaimed. From the Hardcover edition. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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