“Eventide” is equally as wonderful- engaging - compassionate- luminous- spare - and emotionally satisfying as “Plainsong”....I was pulled in immediately from the start.We meet old and new characters...with children that will steal and break your heart ...Life is lonely, sad, filled with tragedy, and filled with love. The trailer..... “ Old and dilapidated, it had once been bright turquoise but the color had faded to a dirty yellow in the hot sun and the blasting wind. Inside, clothes were piled

Kent Haruf is among the most down-to-earth writers I have ever encountered. His books are simple and beautifully written, but also complex and gritty. He introduces you to people who become embedded in your heart, then he lets you witness the way life can tear at good people, how the evil people can sometimes win the battle, but he gives you to understand that they will never win the war. Why? Because the good people are always out there fighting, showing up, standing firm. He spares you none of...

It was with some regret that I turned the last page of “Eventide”, knowing there were no more volumes left for me to read in the “Plainsong trilogy”. The citizens of Holt, with their daily struggles and the simplicity of their rural living, have become a sort of cobbled family where I feel welcome and cozy, and they have tugged at my heartstrings in ways I couldn’t have anticipated.Precisely in this volume, the concept of family is at the front stage of the story; it shifts and morphs continuall...

I've never lived in a small town, nor even visited a cattle ranch, yet it feels like coming home to return once again to Holt, Colorado and the folks who live there.The old McPheron brothers are still working the cattle, with the occasional snorty bull, cows with sour dispositions, and calves bawling for their mamas. Harold and Raymond are men of few words. As long as they have been living and working together, not much needs to be said between them, and their companionable silence is just as co...

Where I grew up, there was an old bachelor who lived about half a mile farther from town than we did. He lived in a tiny shack of a house and would often drop in to our place on the way to or from town. I will call him Charlie, although everyone always said his first and last names together like they were one. He drove a buggy with a beautiful, older white horse pulling it. The buggy was black and had a cover mounted on risers to keep the sun and rain off. The horse wore ‘blinders’, maybe so it

Kent Haruf - 1943 - 2014 - image from Colorado Central Magazine - photo by Mike Rosso Eventide continues Haruf’s depiction of Holt, Colorado, begun in Plainsong, of a small town with a wide range of humanity. Like Plainsong, Eventide is a beautiful work with moving characters, captivating imagery, and a clear view of humanity at its core. It made me cry both for struggles of its characters and the clarity of its writing. Familiar characters from Plainsong, Tom Guthrie, Maggie Jones, Harold and R...

“It was still hot outside, though the sun had begun to lean to the west, and the first intimations of fall were in the air – that smell of dust and dry leaves, that annual lonesomeness that comes of summer closing down.”Sixteen years ago, when Eventide was first published, if you had walked up to me with this book in your hand and said “Here. Read this. It’s a great book.” I would have said, “What and who is it about? Where does it take place?” You likely would have stated, “Well, it’s about ord...

It's taken me a while to get here, but I've spent the last two weeks in Kent Haruf's world, reading Plainsong and then Eventide. It's been like a religious experience. His pages are a humble wooden pew in a country chapel, his words are the blessings from the gentlest sermon.So gentle, this sermon. Nothing is pressed, everything is as it is. There are bad people, and children suffer. But then there are the good. I used to say that Matthew Cuthbert from Anne of Green Gables was the very best (as

This is the follow up to Plainsong, returning to the small town of Holt, Colorado.A few characters make appearances again along with several new ones. I was thrilled to be back with the McPheron brothers, especially. They rate highly in my list of favorite-ever characters😍This novel deals a lot with loss, separation, and loneliness of many people in the town.. but also shows the compassion of many.As with Plainsong, I just loved this!

****4.5 Stars**** I'm sad...my last Kent Haruf novel. I'm going to miss the McPheron brothers. Review to follow.

Letting go, image source: http://sustainablejill.com/wp-content... Eventide is the brilliant and perfect follow-up to Plainsong, told in the same, spare language and set a couple of years later. You could read it as a standalone novel, but you'd be missing more than the half you have not read - not so much in terms of plot as equilibrium.Even though a notable aspect of both books is the lack of backstory, and there are major characters in this who left not so much as a dusty footprint on the pa...

So beautiful - maybe even slightly better than Plainsong. Haruf writes from the heart and in doing so he touches ours. He features good people and bad people but that's how life is. Some of his characters make you want to reach out and give them a hug, others you would like to be your best friends. All of them are memorable and provide food for thought after the book has finished.There are some really sad moments in Eventide - I was mopping up tears over one momentous death. And then there are t...

I love Kent Haruf for the same reasons I love Elizabeth Strout, Michael Cunningham and Larry McMurtry; their stunning and inspiring writing, their humanity and honesty and most of all for the love they show for their characters. That love, I believe, is the reason why their characters get under your skin and you feel as compelled to read about the “bad guys” as much as you do about the “good ones”. And that love is also the reason why all these authors became as well regarded as they are and peo...

It don't seem to matter at all what we like. It's how things are.It doesn't matter where this quote is, the context, or who said it. This is the essence of what Kent Haruf expresses in his exquisite books: what life as a human is really like, all the goodness and the almost intolerable pain. There is no excess in his writing. He takes my breath away, makes my heart pound, and my soul sing — all at the same time.

Wow. I don't know what I did to deserve this, but I've been suddenly swept up into a literary vortex of greatness. Oh, wait, I know what I've done. I've read about 300 crappy books in my lifetime and my karma finally came back and whispered, "good books come to those who wait."Do you love John Steinbeck? Carson McCullers? How about Larry McMurtry? If you love any ONE of these writers, this will probably be a solid 4-star read for you. If you are like me and you love all 3 of them, well, inform y...

There's an awful lot of loneliness in this world, and meanness and cruelty and feelings of inadequacy and various other things that make being human feel like running the gauntlet just trying to make it day to day. So many things out of our control, events that can't be helped or made better; but then again, there are those people who try in their own small way to lend a hand, or an ear, or maybe just a look between two friends, to light the darkness with little pinpoints of hope.The reason Kent...

4.5 I know I am reading a great book when I continue to think about the characters during the day, even when I am not reading. I feel like I know these people in this story and I was worried and sad with them. At one point I was angry with them. There are also good times in this story. I loved the small town feel of Holt, Colorado. I felt like I was there. Excellent writing, great story! I look forward to book 3. Highly recommend.

Harold and Raymond McPlieron with their foster daughter, Victoria Robideaux and her little baby daughter continues life on the cattle ranch near the rural town, Holt, in Colorado.As life is slowly pacing along on the tracks of history, new people enter their lives, and old ones leave. The rich colors of rural life, in both culture and language spread out in this book like the autumn leaves in a forest of humanity. There is heartbreak and happiness; the good and the bad, and a story line to tie i...

Well, one problem with giving the first book of a series 5 stars (Plainsong) is, if the second book is better there is nowhere to go. This story was better.Eventide (Plainsong, #2) by the amazing Kent Haruf continues the story of the characters we discovered in Plainsong, living their lives on the Denver Plains in fictional Holt County. Haruf describes the town of Holt and its surrounds beautifully, I found myself totally immersed in this description of the place, I could really feel it.The McPh...

I do not need to write about Kent Haruf's beautiful prose nor his uncanny ability to bring to life the inhabitants of a small town in CO, called Holt. Every friend of mine on GR has either read Haruf and knows these things or has read other reviews which expound upon these aspects of Haruf's writings. I appreciated all of these but, after reading Eventide I had expectations for this book, the next in a series, which were disappointed. Disappointed is hardly the word for what I felt by the death...