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Overview
"Ambitious, but never seeming so, Kent Haruf reveals a whole community as he interweaves the stories of a pregnant high school girl, a lonely teacher, a pair of boys abandoned by their mother, and a couple of crusty bachelor farmers. From simple elements, Haruf achieves a novel of wisdom and grace—a narrative that builds in strength and feeling until, as in a choral chant, the voices in the book surround, transport, and lift the reader off the ground."
-FROM THE CITATION FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
1999 National Book Award nominee for Fiction.
Synopsis
A heartstrong story of family and romance, tribulation and tenacity, set on the High Plains east of Denver.
In the small town of Holt, Colorado, a high school teacher is confronted with raising his two boys alone after their mother retreats first to the bedroom, then altogether.
Joshua Klein
Kent Haruf's third novel Plainsong-- already been nominated for the National Book Award--indicates just how much the novel has resonated with readers. Haruf himself must be surprised, but not that surprised: A professor at Southern Illinois University and an honest-to-goodness son of a preacher, Haruf is so adept at capturing the heart of an innocent side of America that it's hard to believe anyone wouldn't be affected by his work. Plainsong is set in Holt, Colorado, a rural community well outside Denver; the setting is timeless, with only the occasional, fleeting reference to VCRs or pop culture indicating that the book takes place closer to "now" than "then." Tom Guthrie is a high-school teacher left raising two young sons after his depressed and disappointed wife moves to the city. His children bake cookies, ride horses, and run a paper route, but at the same time they almost consciously seek out a cool, hardened, cowboy sense of maturity.
Meanwhile, another teacher helps a pregnant teen disowned by her mother find love and acceptance in two hilariously well-intentioned elderly brothers. The two tentatively take the girl on as a boarder on their cattle farm even though they barely know how to communicate with anyone but each other. These seven characters form the core of Plainsong, which switches vantages from chapter to chapter like a more direct Faulkner, though the prose is no less poetic and evocative. Through this device, Haruf illustrates how relationships are formed and what makes them last, how responsibility and accountability make people good, and how cooperation can make a small town strong in times of conflict. A fast, encouraging, enlightening read, Plainsong is beautiful, real, and wise: a true great American novel.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Critically acclaimed author Kent Haruf, the recipient of a PEN/Hemingway special citation and a Whiting Award for his debut novel, The Tie That Binds, follows with the intensely affecting story of family, tribulation, and tenacity, set on the High Plains east of Denver. In the small town of Holt, Colorado, a high school teacher struggles to raise his two sons alone; a pregnant teenager, deserted by her older boyfriend, is cast out of her mother's house; two elderly brothers, lifelong bachelors, farm their declining family homestead. Despite differences of place and station in life, Haruf's unforgettable characters come together to survive, with their confusion, dignity, and humor intact and resonant.From the Publisher
"A novel so foursquare, so delicate and lovely . . . it has the power to exalt the reader." —The New York Times Book Review"Resonant and meaningful . . . . A song of praise in honor of the lives it chronicles [and] a story about people's ability to adapt and redeem themselves, to heal the wounds of isolation by moving, gropingly and imperfectly, toward community." —Richard Tillinghast, The Washington Post Book World
"A compelling and compassionate novel. . . . [With] his sheer assurance as a storyteller, [Mr. Haruf] has conjured up an entire community, and ineluctably immersed the reader in its dramas." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
"A work as flawlessly unified as a short story by Poe or Chekhov." —Jon Hassler, Chicago Tribune
"Haunting, virtuosic, inimitable." —Sarah Saffian, San Francisco Chronicle
"If the novelist invents a world, then Mr. Haruf has shaped a place of enormous goodness... The story itself—spare, unsentimental, rooted in action—honors the values of the community it describes." —Lisa Michaels,
"A moving look at our capacity for both pointless cruelty and simple decency, our ability to walk out of the wreckage of one family and build a stronger one where that one used to stand." —Jeff Giles, Newsweek
"A work as flawlessly unified as a short story by Poe or Chekhov." —Jon Hassler, Chicago Tribune
Joshua Klein
Kent Haruf's third novel Plainsong-- already been nominated for the National Book Award--indicates just how much the novel has resonated with readers. Haruf himself must be surprised, but not that surprised: A professor at Southern Illinois University and an honest-to-goodness son of a preacher, Haruf is so adept at capturing the heart of an innocent side of America that it's hard to believe anyone wouldn't be affected by his work. Plainsong is set in Holt, Colorado, a rural community well outside Denver; the setting is timeless, with only the occasional, fleeting reference to VCRs or pop culture indicating that the book takes place closer to "now" than "then." Tom Guthrie is a high-school teacher left raising two young sons after his depressed and disappointed wife moves to the city. His children bake cookies, ride horses, and run a paper route, but at the same time they almost consciously seek out a cool, hardened, cowboy sense of maturity.Meanwhile, another teacher helps a pregnant teen disowned by her mother find love and acceptance in two hilariously well-intentioned elderly brothers. The two tentatively take the girl on as a boarder on their cattle farm even though they barely know how to communicate with anyone but each other. These seven characters form the core of Plainsong, which switches vantages from chapter to chapter like a more direct Faulkner, though the prose is no less poetic and evocative. Through this device, Haruf illustrates how relationships are formed and what makes them last, how responsibility and accountability make people good, and how cooperation can make a small town strong in times of conflict. A fast, encouraging, enlightening read, Plainsong is beautiful, real, and wise: a true great American novel.
Verlyn Klinkenborg
Haruf has made a novel so foursquare, so delicate and lovely, that it has the power to exalt the reader...At times, a sentence almost suggests Flannery O'Connor...But the prose and the outlook are always Haruf's own.— NY Times Book Review
Michiko Kakutani
...[a plainspoken and moving novel] that weaves together the voices of half a dozen people living in a small Colorado town and turns their overlapping stories into a powerful portrait of a community...— New York Times
Publishers Weekly
In the same way that the plains define the American landscape, small-town life in the heartlands is a quintessentially American experience. Holt, Colo., a tiny prairie community near Denver, is both the setting for and the psychological matrix of Haruf's beautifully executed new novel. Alternating chapters focus on eight compassionately imagined characters whose lives undergo radical change during the course of one year. High school teacher Tom Guthrie's depressed wife moves out of their house, leaving him to care for their young sons. Ike, 10, and Bobby, nine, are polite, sensitive boys who mature as they observe the puzzling behavior of adults they love. At school, Guthrie must deal with a vicious student bully whose violent behavior eventually menaces Ike and Bobby, in a scene that will leave readers with palpitating hearts. Meanwhile, pregnant teenager Victoria Roubideaux, evicted by her mother, seeks help from kindhearted, pragmatic teacher Maggie Jones, who convinces the elderly McPheron brothers, Raymond and Harold, to let Victoria live with them in their old farmhouse. After many decades of bachelor existence, these gruff, unpolished cattle farmers must relearn the art of conversation when Victoria enters their lives. The touching humor of their awkward interaction endows the story with a heartwarming dimensionality. Haruf's The Tie That Binds descriptions of rural existence are a richly nuanced mixture of stark details and poetic evocations of the natural world. Weather and landscape are integral to tone and mood, serving as backdrop to every scene. His plain, Hemingwayesque prose takes flight in lyrical descriptions of sunsets and birdsong, and condenses to the matter-of-fact in describing the routines of animal husbandry. In one scene, a rancher's ungloved hand repeatedly reaches though fecal matter to check cows for pregnancy; in another, readers follow the step-by-step procedure of an autopsy on a horse. Walking a tightrope of restrained design, Haruf steers clear of sentimentality and melodrama while constructing a taut narrative in which revelations of character and rising emotional tensions are held in perfect balance. This is a compelling story of grief, bereavement, loneliness and anger, but also of kindness, benevolence, love and the making of a strange new family. In depicting the stalwart courage of decent, troubled people going on with their lives, Haruf's quietly eloquent account illumines the possibilities of grace. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.VOYA
Set in a small Colorado town, this novel centers on townspeople whose lives interconnect. The chapters alternate among the stories of these ordinary people. Tom Guthrie is a high school teacher who is left to raise his two sons, Ike and Bobby, when their mother descends into mental illness. At the same time, Tom is having trouble at school with a violent student. Victoria is a pregnant teenager whose mother has thrown her out of the house. The two elderly McPheron brothers are bachelors who live their solitary lives on their land. Maggie, another teacher at Guthrie's school, arranges for Victoria to live with the McPheron brothers, whose social skills are somewhat lacking but who try in their awkward ways to make Victoria feel at home. Although all the characters' troubles and worries are captivating, it is Victoria's problem that is most likely to engage teen readers. Handled by a lesser writer, some of these plots would be predictable, but Haruf's prose transcends any formula. The writing is simple and understated, with no quotation marks around the dialogue. The novel has a timeless quality to it. This gentle book is a beautiful read, appropriate for high school collections and public library young adult collections. VOYA CODES: 5Q 4P S A/YA (Hard to imagine it being any better written; Broad general YA appeal; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12; Adult and Young Adult). 1999, Random House, 301p, $24. Ages 16 to Adult. Reviewer: Alice F. SternSOURCE: VOYA, October 2000 (Vol. 23, No. 4)