Name: Plainsong
ISBN: 1568958390

Kent Haruf

Plainsong

Will Vunderink

A well-constructed, affecting, simple, satisfying book. A small cast of characters creates a story wide in scope. In the McPheron brothers Haruf has written two of the most heartwarming, purely good people I've ever encountered in a work of fiction. Wonderful stuff.

Dana Kraft

Love the simplicity of the writing; I didn't need to be told what was going on in each character's mind to understand them. This also feels like a traditional western but without the typical clean ending....life just goes on. The McPheron brothers were my favorite characters.

Melody Izard

What a delightful book! So beautifully written. Takes place in the small town of Holt, Colorado and is the story of 2 elderly brothers, a pregnant teenager and a high school teacher who is left to raise his sons, Ike, 10 and Bobby, nine, on his own after his depressed wife moves to Denver. We read and watch as these characters' lives change drastically during the course of the story. The book is at times funny; at times intensely painful; sometimes incredibly descriptive; and other times deliberately vague. This is an absolute must read!

With an introduction by Peter Carey I suppose it is crazy. I don't know. I don't even care. But that girl needs somebody . . . And you old solitary bastards need somebody too. Somebody or something besides an old red cow to care about and worry over. Set in Kent Haruf's fictional landscape of Holt County, Colorado, Plainsong is a story of simple lives told with extraordinary empathy. Tom Guthrie is struggling to bring up his two young sons alone and, in the same town, school girl Victoria Roubideaux is pregnant and homeless. Whilst Tom's boys find their way forward without their mother, brothers Harold and Raymond McPheron - gentle, solitary, gruff and unpolished - agree to take Victoria in, unaware that their lives will change forever. A novel of haunting beauty from one of America's greatest writers of our time, Plainsong is an undeniable classic that explores the grace and hope of every human life and mankind's infinite capacity for love.

Plainsong

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