From the Folio Prize-shortlisted author of Plainsong, Eventide and Benediction, a stunning novel about finding happiness.
Kent Haruf is the author of six novels (and, with the photographer Peter Brown, West of Last Chance). His honours include a Whiting Foundation Writers' Award, the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Award, the Wallace Stegner Award, and a special citation from the PEN/Hemingway Foundation; he was also a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and The New Yorker Book Award. Benediction was shortlisted for the Folio Prize. He died in November 2014, at the age of 71.
The language is straightforward and stripped back, calm and
unassuming. And it all combines to make a novel which, like Louis
and Addie's relationship does for them, warms and expands the heart
. . . the sentiment that lingers most, on finishing this beautiful,
tranquil, tender novel, is contentment
*Observer*
Simple, low-key and absolutely beautiful.
*The Times*
I loved Kent Haruf's small-town love story
*David Nicholls*
To ring true, description of even the humblest kind of fulfilment
and contentment must be written in awareness of human inadequacy
and cruelty and the possibility of illness, ruin, death. One false
word can make it all incredible. I don't think there's a false word
in Kent Haruf's final novel, Our Souls in the Night . . . Many
novels have been about the pursuit of happiness, but this one is
luminous with its actual presence . . . Perhaps happiness is less
predictable than misery, since it partakes of freedom. Like
freedom, also, it's never secure; it can't be for ever. But it can
be real, and in this beautiful novel, we can share it
*Guardian*
So beautiful; quietly gripping, full of love, humour and gentle
shocks. Our Souls at Night is a perfect tribute to a truly
extraordinary writer.
*Donal Ryan, author of The Spinning Heart*
A humane, deeply affecting final novel
*Daily Mail*
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.
*New York Times*
Gritty, painful and human . . . his novels are imbued with an
affection and understanding that transform the most mundane details
into poetry . . . Haruf's final novel is a beacon of hope; he is
sorely missed
*Financial Times*
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
*New Yorker*
Short, spare and moving . . . Our Souls at Night is already
creating a stir.
*Wall Street Journal*
An eloquent story of a man and a woman who, in advanced age, come
together to wrestle with the events of their lives and their hopes
for the future.
*Red Magazine*
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.
*Washington Post*
A novel full of kindness, open-heartedness and grace, of ordinary
experiences and commonplace regret . . . unputdownable as a
thriller - an unlikely page-turner full of quiet surprises . . .
It's an astonishing piece of writing
*Literary Review*
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*
If you haven't read Kent Haruf's wonderful backlist, now is the
time to discover it. Or jump in at the end, with this novel; a
graceful story . . . a melancholy reminder that happiness can be
fragile.
*Psychologies Magazine*
Gripping and tender . . . a sweet love story, a deep friendship . .
. with a stunning sense of all that's passed and the precious
importance of the days that remain.
*Publishers Weekly*
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