Plainsong by Kent Haruf
It feels really good to be reviewing books again. I have been staying away from books since school started last year. Wanted to read and review on so many awesome novels but I haven’t exactly had the time to review them all. So finally, I got down to doing it. Though its going to be a short one, I believe that this book requires all the recognition that has been given to it and I would recommend this novel to EVERYONE!
Plainsong by Kent Haruf
Initially, when I went to the library, I was hoping to find a novel written by Haruki Murakami but he is such an amazing author that I couldn’t find a single book of his on the shelf. So I went to the recommended shelf column and decided to give this book a shot. I never thought that I would enjoy reading this novel as much as I truly did. Plainsong truly swept me off my feet.
Kent Haruf has made this novel so foursquare, so delicate and lovely, that it has the power to exalt the reader. “Here there was this man Tom Guthire…” that was how Haruf started the novel. Right from that very sentence till the very end of the book, there was never a part where I felt like putting down the book or felt like I needed a coffee break. It was the kind of novel that kept me on the edge of my chair.
This man Guthrie, a high-school teacher left to bring up his two young boys, Ike and Bobby, after his wife’s totally retreat from life; a pregnant teen-ager named Victoria Roubideaux, shut out of her home by her mother; the old unmarried McPheron brothers, Harold and Raymond, the rustily uncommunicative cattle-farming brothers who take her in — these and a woman named Maggie Jones and the small town of Holt are the world of ”Plainsong.” It’s an imperfect world where things simply are as they are, their beauty and their ugliness depending on just that fact.
From its delicious humour to its heart stopping moments of sadness, Plainsong is an irresistibly delightful and unsentimental novel. There are loads of reviews available online regarding this awesome novel. Therefore, I am not going to reiterate the point as to how amazing and relatable this novel is to our daily lives. If you guys are looking for a novel that will touch your heart and will leave you wanting for more, PLAINSONG is the right choice for you.
However! If it is your exam period, I suggest you don’t read it as I am pretty sure you would not be able to stop once you start! You can also forget about taking coffee breaks, in fact, you doubt you will need any! (:
What is so satisfying about Plainsong, however, is the persistent impression the novel creates that Haruf’s Colorado is as real as Internet addiction, as current as Starbucks, as common as telemarketers calling at dinnertime. Plainsong is a book to be savored: a good read, buoyed by fresh, compelling prose, characters who matter, and the successful evocation of an authentically American place
– Mark Jacobs
Here is poetry of landscape, a tender and passionate evocation of ordinary people in majestic country. It is a novel of the young and the old, of the bonds that bind us to each other and written with a kind of compassion that makes it ultimately powerfully uplifting
- Niall Williams
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