{"id":5886,"date":"2016-07-15T08:00:51","date_gmt":"2016-07-15T12:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5886"},"modified":"2016-07-15T08:00:51","modified_gmt":"2016-07-15T12:00:51","slug":"our-souls-at-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5886","title":{"rendered":"****Our Souls at Night"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Our

photo: Mitchell Diatz, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

By Kent Haruf \u2013 My book club selected this short novel, 192 pages, a gentle story about aging and that difficult transition between when parents think they know what\u2019s best for their children (and usually tell them so) and children come to think they know what\u2019s best for their parents (and do tell them so).<\/p>\n

Addie, a widow, and Louis, a widower, are neighbors in small-town Holt, Colorado, in the eastern, high plains portion of the state. In the book\u2019s first chapter, Addie pays a call on Louis and proposes that he visit her at night, lie in bed with her, and have a companionable conversation. Sex isn\u2019t exactly off the agenda, but it\u2019s not at the top and rather beside the point. This unusual arrangement begins, and before long the whole town knows about it. Soon thereafter word spreads to Addie and Louis\u2019s far-flung and scandalized children, who want it to stop.<\/p>\n

The conversations between Addie and Louis are low-key and unsentimental. They talk about their marriages and the deaths of their spouses, about their children, about many things. Author Haruf\u2019s unadorned writing style (not even decorated with quotation marks) gives their interactions a deceptive simplicity. For example In speaking about Addie\u2019s son Gene, who is losing his store and has to start a new career, Louis asks:<\/p>\n

What is it he wants to do?<\/p>\n

He\u2019s always been in sales of some kind.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t seem to fit him, as I remember him.<\/p>\n

No. He\u2019s not the salesman type. I think he\u2019s afraid now. He won\u2019t say so.<\/p>\n

But this could be a chance for him to break out. Break the pattern. Like his mother has. Like you\u2019ve done.<\/p>\n

He won\u2019t, though. He\u2019s got his life all screwed down tight.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Both of them find in their late-night conversations a closeness, a connection they never achieved with their spouses. Addie asks, \u201cWho does ever get what they want? It doesn\u2019t seem to happen to many of us if any at all.\u201d Except these lucky two, who at least know what they want. Says Louis, \u201cI just want to live simply and pay attention to what\u2019s happening each day. And come sleep with you at night.\u201d<\/p>\n

This restrained style works perfectly well in a novel about the places and people that are Haruf\u2019s subjects, in this book and his others. It is a lean diet, stripped of fat and garnish. Yet the meat of Our Souls<\/em>, the struggle against pettiness and small-mindedness, is worthy of consumption.<\/p>\n

People seem to like this book. All seven copies in the Mercer County Library System were out, so I had to snag the large-print version. I\u2019ve since learned this was Haruf\u2019s last book, the sixth in a series set in Holt, finished a few days before he died<\/a> in 2014.
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