If you have followed this blog for awhile you will no doubt know that I am a Kent Haruf fan - indeed, he’s listed on my favourite authors page - but it was with some trepidation that I picked up his novel All Souls at Night. You can follow me on Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.Fiction – paperback Picador 180 pages 2016. That will give me plenty of reading time! Until next time, write on. We won’t meet in December so it will be January before we’re ready for our next book. They wanted to be happy in their own rights. As they got older, Addie and Louis stopped caring so much what everyone thought of them. The book gave a few good insights on aging as well. We think she felt bad for how Gene’s childhood turned out and was looking for a second chance at raising a boy. It was odd how Gene started acting like the parent to Addie, forbidding her to see her boyfriend. Addie only broke up with Louis because gene forced her to, threatening to take away her grandson. The two were loyal to each other after they started, shaking off their children’s disapproval. She didn’t seem to care too much what people thought of the two of them, but it might have been different if Louis had a negative image around town. We wondered if Louis would have been attractive to Addie if he’d been divorced. One of the objections to Louis was that he’d cheated on his wife. She needed the escape, to let her live in a fantasy world for just a bit, to keep her happy. How did she explain that? Did her husband even care that she was disappearing for a weekend? He might not even have cared. She said she used to go to Denver by herself. One thing Addie mentioned didn’t make sense to us. We suspected that on some level, she was hoping to find what she’d had before her daughter’s death. Her relationship after that was never as strong as it had been. She was clearly lonely, but why did she want to share her bed and talk? It was clear her marriage changed a lot when Connie died. If Louis gained control of Addie’s money, he’d be in a tough situation, even worse than he already was. He was strapped for cash at the time and was likely thinking of borrowing from his mother. He was jealous of Louis for bonding with Jamie in a way he struggled to do. Gene’s protest was the easiest to figure out. They were both single, but everyone seemed to protest. We wondered why there was so much protest to Louis and Addie. We also skip over Addie thinking about a way to be less lonely and considering the men she knows who she could ask. It’s as if he’s skipped the exposition and started right in with the interesting part. It also implies there was something before. It’s a very conversational way to start a story, which made the writing very engaging.
The first word in the book is ‘and.’ We could think of many reasons Haruf chose to start like this. Another reader interpreted ‘night’ to refer to them doing this at the end of their lives. The things they talked about required them to really bare their souls and be open about the topics they picked. I thought it referred to them spending time together at night. We had some good debate over the meaning of the title.
All his books take place in the same fictional Colorado town, Holt. Our Souls at Night was the last book Kent Haruf wrote before he died and he knew he was sick while he was writing it. Many recommended his other book, Plainsong, and said it was even better than this one. It was a great little book and there was a lot more to it the more I reflected on it and talked about it. I ended up liking this book a lot more when I reflected on it after finishing. A few weeks ago, my book club met to discuss Our Souls at Night.
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