Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #474746 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Plainsong, according to Kent Haruf's epigraph, is "any simple and unadorned melody or air." It's a perfect description of this lovely, rough-edged book, set on the very edge of the Colorado plains. Tom Guthrie is a high school teacher whose wife can't--or won't--get out of bed; the McPherons are two bachelor brothers who know little about the world beyond their farm gate; Victoria Roubideaux is a pregnant 17-year-old with no place to turn. Their lives parallel each other in much the same way any small-town lives would--until Maggie Jones, another teacher, makes them intersect. Even as she tries to draw Guthrie out of his black cloud, she sends Victoria to live with the two elderly McPheron brothers, who know far more about cattle than about teenage girls. Trying to console her when she think she's hurt her baby, the best lie they can come up with is this: "I knew of a heifer we had one time that was carrying a calf, and she got a length of fencewire down her some way and it never hurt her or the calf."

Holt, Colorado, is the kind of small town where everyone knows everyone's business before that business even happens. In a way, that's true of the book, too. There's not a lot of suspense here, plot wise; you can see each narrative twist and turn coming several miles down the pike. What Plainsong has instead is note-perfect dialogue, surrounded by prose that's straightforward yet rich in particulars: "a woman walking a white lapdog on a piece of ribbon" glimpsed from a car window; the boys' mother, her face "as pale as schoolhouse chalk"; the smells of hay and manure, the variations of prairie light. Even the novel's larger questions are sized to a domestic scale. Will Guthrie find love? Will Victoria run away with the father of her baby? Will the McPherons learn to hold a conversation? But in this case, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and Plainsong manages to capture nothing less than an entire world--fencing pliers, calf-pullers, and all. Kent Haruf has a gorgeous ear, and a knack for rendering the simple complex. --Mary Park

Customer Reviews

A must read
Plainsong is quite simply a must read book. Although you can't buy his other novels in the UK order them in from .com as they even surpass this brilliant book. As other people have reviewed on the hardback this is a book that will make you laugh outloud in parts (and I mean outloud) and break your heart at the same time. This is masterful storytelling - you are in awe of it! This book deserves the same kind of success as Angela's Ashes and Memoirs of a Geisha - read it and like me press it onto every friend you have - they will thank you for it!

I am delighted with having discovered this author
As soon as I started reading this book I realized that the author has an immense ability for getting the reader involved in the story through his passionate descriptions of people and places, interesting dialogues and three-dimensional characters. The fact that the novel revolves around everyday events, and pays homage to its name in the sense that there are no big surprises or twisted plots, contributes to make this one of the best written books I have read in a long time.

Tom Guthrie is a school teacher in Holt Colorado whose wife is secluded in bed at the time in which the story starts and who is abandoned by her shortly afterwards. He is left to live with his two kids, Ike and Bobby, and to try to find new interests in life. The two kids deliver newspapers in the morning before school and have to deal with a myriad of colorful characters, from the grumpy and mean Ralph to a lonely old woman looking for someone that cares.

Victoria Roubideaux is an adolescent who is pregnant and is still in school. When her mother finds out about this, instead of offering support she kicks the girl out of her house. That is why Victoria ends up living with the McPheron brothers, two old men who own a ranch and take care of it themselves. The relationship that begins between the rough old men and the lost girl is narrated with great ability, and conveys a beautiful message.

The author describes events like a cow giving birth with such a level of detail and accuracy that it reminded me when I saw this happen for the first time when living in Uruguay. People falling in love, having to deal with sick relatives, being pressured at work and facing death are the kinds of events that populate this novel. The final result is absolutely delightful, and I do not hesitate to recommend this book to anyone that enjoys good literature.

One of the best books I have read this year
Kent Haruf has a style of writing that draws you into this book , I couldn't put it down.It was like watching a good movie.The characters were so real.I bought his other 2 books straight away on the strength of Plainsong.An inspiring Author who has become one of my favourites.