Our Souls at Night

Kent Haruf is the author of six novels (and, with the photographer Peter Brown, West of Last Chance). His honours include a Whiting Foundation Writers' Award, the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Award, the Wallace Stegner Award, and a special citation from the PEN/Hemingway Foundation; he was also a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and The New Yorker Book Award. Benediction was shortlisted for the Folio Prize. He died in November 2014, at the age of seventy-one.

To ring true, description of even the humblest kind of fulfilment and contentment must be written in awareness of human inadequacy and cruelty and the possibility of illness, ruin, death. One false word can make it all incredible. I don't think there's a false word in Kent Haruf's final novel, Our Souls in the Night ... Many novels have been about the pursuit of happiness, but this one is luminous with its actual presence ... Perhaps happiness is less predictable than misery, since it partakes of freedom. Like freedom, also, it's never secure; it can't be for ever. But it can be real, and in this beautiful novel, we can share it -- Ursula K Le Guin Guardian Simple, low-key and absolutely beautiful. The Times So beautiful; quietly gripping, full of love, humour and gentle shocks. Our Souls at Night is a perfect tribute to a truly extraordinary writer. -- Donal Ryan, author of THE SPINNING HEART A humane, deeply affecting final novel Daily Mail A delicate, sneakily devastating evocation of place and character ... Haruf's story accumulates resonance through carefully chosen details; the novel is quiet but never complacent New Yorker An eloquent story of a man and a woman who, in advanced age, come together to wrestle with the events of their lives and their hopes for the future. Red Magazine In a fitting and gorgeous end to a body of work that prizes resilience above all else, Haruf has bequeathed readers a map charting a future that is neither easy nor painless, but it's also not something we have to bear alone. Esquire His great subject was the struggle of decency against small-mindedness, and his rare gift was to make sheer decency a moving subject ... This novel runs on the dogged insistence that simple elements carry depths, and readers will find much to be grateful for. New York Times Short, spare and moving ... Our Souls at Night is already creating a stir. Wall Street Journal If you haven't read Kent Haruf's wonderful backlist, now is the time to discover it. Or jump in at the end, with this novel; a graceful story ... a melancholy reminder that happiness can be fragile. Psychologies Magazine Utterly charming and distilled to elemental purity ... such a tender, carefully polished work that it seems like a blessing we had no right to expect. -- Ron Charles Washington Post Gripping and tender ... a sweet love story, a deep friendship ... with a stunning sense of all that's passed and the precious importance of the days that remain. Publishers Weekly Gritty, painful and human ... his novels are imbued with an affection and understanding that transform the most mundane details into poetry ... Haruf's final novel is a beacon of hope; he is sorely missed -- Francesca Wade Financial Times I loved Kent Haruf's small-town love story -- David Nicholls