Our Souls at Night

Kent Haruf wrote Our Souls at Night as he was dying. What happens in it? Not a lot. It’s much easier to write stories in which things blow up, plot devices creak, and an ending ties everything up neatly. This quiet, elegiac novel is not that.

Addie and Louis, elderly neighbors, begin sleeping together because the nights are long and they are lonely. Her young grandson, Jamie, visits. Louis gives him a catcher’s mitt and brings home a shelter dog, Bonnie. Their grown children interfere. Complications ensue. And there are no quotation marks to indicate dialogue.

Yet, here I am… show more.

Kent Haruf’s final novel opens with lonely widow Addie Moore appearing on the doorstep of her neighbour, widower Louis Waters, with a proposal: that they spend the night together rather than sleep alone. Addie says, “The nights are the worst. Don’t you think?” I bought the book based purely on that intriguing premise. Unsurprisingly, what begins as a chaste relationship, built on friendship and a way to make sense of the past, soon develops complications. There is gossip (naturally), and their adult children disapprove (naturally), but Addie and Louis prove that age is no barrier to finding love or enjoying… show more.

Who can resist this tender love story of the widow, Addie Moore, and the widower, Louis Waters? This is the book Kent Haruf promised his wife he’d complete before he died, and now we have the gift of his sharp insights into the nature of love in our later years along with his crystalline prose. I’m a romantic at heart, and this book reinforced my faith in the power of love. The humanity and the dignity of these characters will stay with you forever, not to mention the gentle humor that comes from two senior citizens trying to make their… show more.