Plainsong

by Kent Haruf

Book Overview

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST - NATIONAL BESTSELLER - This poignant novel weaves together the lives of a high school teacher, a pregnant teenage girl, and two elderly bachelor brothers, capturing the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375705856
• ISBN13: 9780375724794
• Release Date: August 2000
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 301 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.7" x 5.2"

Customer Reviews

A nice story

This is a very quiet book. A story of compassion, sweetness and pointless cruelty. An easy read.

Extraordinary!

I have never read anything that feels as real as this… I’m sad the author died and he will never write another book. I’m going to read everything he wrote. Why did it take me so long to discover this town and characters? Plainsong is a new favorite and I’m on the second one in this trilogy.

An Astounding Novel

It starts off so simply & then just keeps going with simple language, understandable situations & experiences and your Empathy for the characters builds & builds until you come to respect & admire them!! A lyrical, heartwarming, encouraging book!!

A quiet and graceful tale of a small prairie town

PLAINSONG is one of those novels that sneaks up on a reader, beginning with understated prose and culminating with such authorial affection that the reader does not want to leave the fictional world. Haruf follows the lives of several characters in rural Holt, Colorado - Guthrie, an honest school teacher whose wife has suffered a nervous breakdown; his two sons, Ike and Bobby, who find themselves facing death, independence, and growing up; Victoria Roubideaux, a pregnant teenager thrown out of her mother's house; the McPherons, Harold and Raymond, bachelor brothers who know more about cattle prices and corn cribs than they do about people; and Maggie Jones, the woman who connects them.I did not fall in love with this novel until the hundredth page or so, and then I could not put it down. The narrative flows like a meandering river - steadily but without visible ripples on the surface - and so it takes time to become fully invested in Haruf's characters. Fortunately, the characterizations, fictional details and the quality of the prose are strong enough from the start to keep one reading. The rhythms of life in Holt and the honest, almost innocent, way its citizens face their trials give this novel a graceful elegiac quality. PLAINSONG is a quiet character-driven novel that evokes small town life on the American Plains. I heartily recommend it to readers who like this kind of fiction.

The world has finally discovered Kent Haruf

Unlike the reviewer from Sydney, I am one Aussie who really loved this book. Like all of Kent Haruf's work, this novel is finely crafted to the point where it all seems deceptively simple. It is not only a wonderful character portrayal (and a surprisingly good read), but like all the best American fiction, integrates its characters with the landscape. This is something Haruf has done well twice before and I urge anyone who liked this book to get hold of his first two: "The Ties that Bind" and "Where You Once Belonged". The latter, in particular, is a masterpiece employing the same spare style but building to a tragic climax that is truly heart-rending. It is out of print, but hopefully the success of "Plainsong" will encourage the publishers to re-issue it. Angolphiles won't like "Plainsong" or, indeed, any of Haruf's books, but what do they know?

Perfect Thanksgiving reading

Beautiful, beautiful book. The authentic voices allow the reader to co-create the characters, making for a rewarding reading experience. The style is a tribute to Strunk & White: less is more, nouns and verbs win out over adjectives and adverbs. I stayed up til 2:30 a.m. reading this one, and never felt as though I'd missed the sleep.

WONDERFUL!

This is one of the very best books I've read in a while, and I read 2-3 books a week. I had to force myself to read it slowly so I could savor it. The writing is simple and beautiful, the setting and climate are evoked descriptively, the main characters are honorable, courageous, and likable, and the McPheron brothers are fabulous. I knew it would be excellent when I saw on the back cover that Richard Russo and Howard Frank Mosher, two of my very favorite authors, praised it.

A lovely, understated song of human cruelty and tenderness.

Like Kent Haruf's previous books, Plainsong looks unflinchingly at the cruelty of "plain" human beings, and counterbalances all that's ugly with a remarkable "song" of human kindness and care. Two old brothers, who know little more about the world than birthing calves, take in a young woman rejected by her mother, abused by her lover, and take care of her as she prepares for the birth of a child. Two young brothers go through a terrible journey of loss--their mother, an old neighbor, their innocence about the world of sex and human cruelty--and find solace with the two older brothers who've built their dignity on a lifetime of shared losses. And a teacher, accused of abusing a boy who's bullied his sons, finds love when his wife has abandoned him and the sons he tries to protect.This book, nominated for the National Book Award, is subtle, understated, lovely. And like Kent Haruf's other remarkable novels, it is fully grounded in the plain and beautiful language of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. You must read this book.