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Kelsey Ford: From the Stacks: J. M. Ledgard's Submergence (0 comment)
Our blog feature, "From the Stacks," features our booksellers’ favorite older books: those fortuitous used finds, underrated masterpieces, and lesser known treasures. Basically: the books that we’re the most passionate about handselling. This week, we’re featuring Kelsey F.’s pick, Submergence by J. M. Ledgard...
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Our Souls at Night

by Kent Haruf
Our Souls at Night

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  • Synopses & Reviews

ISBN13: 9781101875896
ISBN10: 1101875895
Condition: Standard
DustJacket: Standard

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From Powells.com

The 2016 Morning News Tournament of Books


Staff Top Fives 2015

Our favorite books of the year.


Staff Pick

Elderly and widowed, small-town residents Louis and Addie begin a timid, slow affair in order to stave off their solitude. They've both reached the point in their lives when gossip and rumor pale in comparison to the almost desperate need of filling in this aching hole of loneliness. However, as their love cautiously blooms, they begin to feel pressure from outside sources, particularly Addie's son. Just at the point when they realize their relationship is vital to their happiness, it becomes clear that there may be consequences and casualties — things they are not at all ready to face. Told in quiet, calm prose, Haruf's posthumous novel is a small but powerful study on human connection, companionship, and love. Just lovely.  Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com

In his final novel, Haruf once again casts an aura of spiritual resonance over the small town of Holt, Colorado. When an elderly woman proposes to her equally old male neighbor that they spend their nights together in conversation, chastely, yet sharing her bed in slumber, the talk among townsfolk begins to stir. Neither Addie Moore nor Louis Waters will allow slurred observations to impact what, for them, has become a blessing encompassing memories and the comfort of having the warmth of another body close on cold and lonely nights. Matters take a dramatic turn, however, with the arrival of Addie's grandson, Jamie. His presence in the ongoing arrangement brings the inevitable question of moral behavior to the surface. As in a minister's benediction, Haruf extends a wise and compassionate resolution to this story, the quintessence of his life's work. Recommended By Mark I., Powells.com

When I finished Our Souls at Night, I wanted to recommend it to everyone — friends, coworkers, unsuspecting bystanders. How Haruf managed to fit such a marvelous love story into such a tiny package is baffling, but he did so masterfully, and if you'll set aside just a few hours to read it, I have no doubt you'll love it, too. Recommended By Tove H., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

A spare yet eloquent, bittersweet yet inspiring 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 imminent future.

In the familiar setting of Holt, Colorado, home to all of Kent Haruf’s inimitable fiction, Addie Moore pays an unexpected visit to a neighbor, Louis Waters. Her husband died years ago, as did his wife, and in such a small town they naturally have known of each other for decades; in fact, Addie was quite fond of Louis’s wife. His daughter lives hours away in Colorado Springs, her son even farther away in Grand Junction, and Addie and Louis have long been living alone in houses now empty of family, the nights so terribly lonely, especially with no one to talk with.

Their brave adventures — their pleasures and their difficulties — are hugely involving and truly resonant, making Our Souls at Night the perfect final installment to this beloved writer’s enduring contribution to American literature.

Review

“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, The Washington Post

Review

“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, The New York Times Book Review

Review

“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, The Dallas Morning News

Review

“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

Review

“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, The Boston Globe

About the Author

Kent Haruf is the author of five previous novels (and, with the photographer Peter Brown, West of Last Chance). His honors 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. He died in November 2014, at the age of seventy-one.

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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 4.2 (5 comments)

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techeditor , February 10, 2017 (view all comments by techeditor)
Although OUR SOULS AT NIGHT appears to be a quick read because it is a short book, it is not. That is, the book seems much longer than it is. Even a slow reader like me should be able to finish such a short book in less than a day. But no. I looked for excuses to put it down. The end did not come soon enough. OUR SOULS AT NIGHT has an interesting beginning. Addie proposes to her neighbor, Louis, that they keep each other company in bed at night. From there, the book continues: something happens, then something else happens, then something else happens, then something else happens, etc. It’s not much of a story. But the story does seem to try to anger the reader a couple of times. Instead, though, I was angry with the author for writing such ridiculousness: Addie’s and Louis’s adult children reprimanding them, both in their 70s, for wanting to be together at night. RIDICULOUS! To make matters worse, Haruf uses punctuation marks sparingly and quotation marks not at all. Why do some authors do that, regress to the time before people thought readability was important enough to invent those marks? I usually read for enjoyment. Reading this book was too much work.

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Freakn Hippie , January 16, 2016
A simple, outstanding read!! Wonderful characters who portray the aging process and its all too human concerns. Very highly recommended.

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kanni , October 04, 2015 (view all comments by kanni)
A beautifully written story of two lonely widowed neighbors looking for companionship. The book has one of the best opening sentences ever and it captured my heart immediately. Within minutes I felt as though I knew Addie and Louis personally. I wanted to jump into the book and join their lives in Holt County.

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LynneP , July 27, 2015 (view all comments by LynneP)
Addie Moore has been widowed for years. Her only son and his family live out of town. She keeps fairly active but she’s lonely. So one day, out of the blue, she calls a neighbor. Louis Waters, a retired high school English teacher, lost his wife years ago. His only daughter lives out of town as well. Since Addie and Louis live in Holt, Colorado, the setting of all of Kent Haruf’s unembellished novels, where people tend to create makeshift families, they won’t be alone all the time in his final novel, Our Souls at Night. The worst part of being alone, Addie tells Louis, is there is no one to talk to at night. So what does he think about coming over to spend the same night, to sleep in the same bed, no obligations, no sex? Well, Louis thinks about it. And he heads over. Their unorthodox relationship has some in town buzzing and others cheering. But Addie says she’s way past worrying about others and it’s time Louis did the same: "I told you I don’t want to live like that anymore -- for other people, what they think, what they believe. I don’t think it’s the way to live. It isn’t for me anyway." Over the course of a summer, they tell each other secrets and stories from their lives, secure that neither will judge the other harshly or wrongly. This includes a huge mistake Louis made and still regrets. He also believes that mistake says something about his character. It’s not something he wishes for his own daughter. He wishes the opposite for her: "I wish you would find somebody who’s a self-starter. Somebody who would go to Italy with you and get up on a Saturday morning and take you up in the mountains and get snowed on and come home and be filled up with it all." When Addie’s young grandson is sent to spend the summer with her, because his parents are fighting, Louis adds wonderful experiences to the child’s world -- watching a nest of newborn mice, learning how to play catch, going camping and having a dog. Trouble could come from many sources -- their ages, their children, even changing feelings. When trouble does arrive, it is infuriating, all the more because it is entirely plausible. Family members don’t always wish the best, and only the best, for each other. This seems especially true when past hurts become deeply ingrained grudges. Some people just don’t get over things. They let their hurts fester until their souls are poisoned. And then, sometimes, they try to infect others with the same venom. Even the people who love them. Haruf gets this across calmly, quietly, letting the characters and their actions speak for themselves without much exposition. This narrative style may seem too quiet and nondescript for some. But when the emotional wallops come, they are all the stronger for the lack of hyperbole. In this, his final novel, Haruf also has a grand meta moment when Addie and Louis talk about dramatic adaptations of stories set in their town by some writer. But they couldn’t be true. They’ve lived in Holt for years and never heard about two old bachelor brothers who took in a young pregnant woman. For readers such as this one, who have adored Haruf’s novels since that story, Plainsong, it was a sweet moment of farewell

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Janet Kent , June 13, 2015
Kent Haruf never disappointed his readers. To anyone reading his books for the first time, let me assure you that Mr. Haruf knew his settings and characters very well. We are all better for having the pleasure of knowing him, if only through his books. Please read all of them.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9781101875896
Binding:
Hardcover
Publication date:
05/26/2015
Publisher:
PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
Pages:
179
Height:
8.00
Width:
5.50
Thickness:
.75
Author:
Kent Haruf
Subject:
Literature-Family Life

Ships free on qualified orders.
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$10.95
List Price:$25.00
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This title in other editions

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