Our Souls at Night (Haruf) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
His great subject was the struggle of decency against small-mindedness, and his rare gift was to make sheer decency a moving subject.... [This] novel runs on the dogged insistence that simple elements carry depths, and readers will find much to be grateful for.
Joan Silber - New York Times Book Review


Short, spare and moving.... Our Souls at Night is already creating a stir.
Jennifer Maloney - Wall Street Journal


Utterly charming [and] distilled to elemental purity.... such a tender, carefully polished work that it seems like a blessing we had no right to expect.
Ron Charles - Washington Post


Lateness—and second chances—have always been a theme for Haruf. But here, in a book about love and the aftermath of grief, in his final hours, he has produced his most intense expression of that yet... Packed into less than 200 pages are all the issues late life provokes.
John Freeman - Boston Globe


A fitting close to a storied career, a beautiful rumination on aging, accommodation, and our need to connect.... As a meditation on life and forthcoming death, Haruf couldn’t have done any better. He has given us a powerful, pared-down story of two characters who refuse to go gentle into that good night.
Lynn Rosen - Philadelphia Enquirer


Haruf is never sentimental, and the ending—multiple twists packed into the last twenty pages—is gritty, painful and utterly human.... His novels are imbued with an affection and understanding that transform the most mundane details into poetry. Like the friendly light shining from Addie's window, Haruf’s final novel is a beacon of hope; he is sorely missed.
Francesca Wade - Financial Times


A marvelous addition to his oeuvre...spare but eloquent, bittersweet yet hopeful.
Kurt Rabin - Fredericksburg Freelance-Star


More Winesburg than Mayberry, Holt and its residents are shaped by physical solitude and emotional reticence.... Haruf's fiction ratifies ordinary, nonflashy decency, but he also knows that even the most placid lives are more complicated than they appear from the outside.... The novel is a plainspoken, vernacular farewell.
Catherine Holmes - Charleston Post and Courier


A fine and poignant novel that demonstrates that our desire to love and to be loved does not dissolve with age.... The story speeds along, almost as if it's a page-turning mystery.
Joseph Peschel - St. Louis Post-Dispatch


Haruf spent a life making art from our blind collisions, and Our Souls at Night is a fitting finish.
John Reimringer - Minneapolis Star Tribune


Elegiac, mournful and compassionate. . .a triumphant end to an inspiring literary career [and] a reminder of a loss on the American cultural landscape, as well as a parting gift from a master storyteller.
William J. Cobb - Dallas Morning News


By turns amusing and sad, skipping-down-the-sidewalk light and pensive.... I recommend reading it straight through, then sitting in quiet reflection of beautiful literary art.
Fred Ohles - Lincoln Journal Star


Haruf was knows as a great writer and teacher whose work will endure.... The cadence of this book is soft and gentle, filled with shy emotion, as tentative as a young person's first kiss—timeless in its beauty.... Addie and Louis find a type of love that, as our society ages, ever more people in the baby boom generation may find is the only kind of love that matters.
Jim Ewing - Jackson Clarion-Ledger


Blunt, textured, and dryly humorous. . . this quietly elegiac novel caps a fine, late-blooming and tenacious writing career.... Haruf’s gift is to make hay of the unexpected, and it feels like a mercy.... This is a novel for just after sunset on a summer’s eve, when the sky is still light and there is much to see, if you are looking.
Wingate Packard - Seattle Times


There is so much wisdom in this beautifully pared-back and gentle book.... [A] small, quiet gem, written in English so plain that it sparkles.
Anne Susskind - Sydney Morning Herald


A delicate, sneakily devastating evocation of place and character.... Haruf’s story accumulates resonance through carefully chosen details; the novel is quiet but never complacent.
The New Yorker


In a fitting and gorgeous end to a body of work that prizes resilience above all else, Haruf has bequeathed readers a map charting a future that is neither easy nor painless, but it’s also not something we have to bear alone.
Esquire


Haruf once again banishes doubts.  Our souls can surprise us.  Beneath the surface of reticent lives—and of Haruf’s calm prose—they prove unexpectedly brave.
Ann Hulbert - Atlantic


(Starred review.) [A] gripping and tender novel.... [Haruf] returns to the landscape and daily life of Holt County, Colo.,...this time with a stunning sense of all that’s passed and the precious importance of the days that remain.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) [A]cclaimed novelist Haruf captures small-town life to perfection in his signature spare style.... Poignant and eloquent, this novel resonates beyond the pages. Don't miss this exceptional work from a literary voice now stilled. —Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Palisade, CO
Library Journal


A sweet love story about the twilight years.... [Addie] and Louis find an emotional intimacy beyond anything either has previously known, and both come to recognize that they "deserve to be happy," no matter what friends and family think.... Those who have been immersed in Holt since Plainsong (1999) will appreciate one last visit.
Kirkus Reviews