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More Winesburg that Mayberry, Holt and its residents are shaped by physical solitude and emotional reticence. . . . Haruf's fiction ratifies ordinary, nonflashy decency, but he also knows that even the most placid lives are more complicated than they appear from the outside. . . . The novel is a plainspoken, vernacular farewell.
— Catherine Holmes, The Charleston Post and Courier
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A fitting close to a storied career, a beautiful rumination on aging, accommodation, and our need to connect. . . . As a meditation on life and forthcoming death, Haruf couldn’t have done any better. He has given us a powerful, pared-down story of two characters who refuse to go gentle into that good night.
— Lynn Rosen, The Philadelphia Enquirer
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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.
— The New Yorker
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Elegiac, mournful and compassionate. . .a triumphant end to an inspiring literary career [and] a reminder of a loss on the American cultural landscape, as well as a parting gift from a master storyteller.
— William J. Cobb, The Dallas Morning News
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A fine and poignant novel that demonstrates that our desire to love and to be loved does not dissolve with age. . . . The story speeds along, almost as if it's a page-turning mystery.
— Joseph Peschel, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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By turns amusing and sad, skipping-down-the-sidewalk light and pensive. . . . I recommend reading it straight through, then sitting in quiet reflection of beautiful literary art.
— Fred Ohles, The Lincoln Journal Star
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Haruf is never sentimental, and the ending—multiple twists packed into the last twenty pages—is gritty, painful and utterly human. . . . His novels are imbued with an affection and understanding that transform the most mundane details into poetry. Like the friendly light shining from Addie's window, Haruf’s final novel is a beacon of hope; he is sorely missed.
— Francesca Wade, Financial Times
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Haruf was knows as a great writer and teacher whose work will endure. . . . The cadence of this book is soft and gentle, filled with shy emotion, as tentative as a young person's first kiss—timeless in its beauty. . . . Addie and Louis find a type of love that, as our society ages, ever more people in the baby boom generation may find is the only kind of love that matters.
— Jim Ewing, The Jackson Clarion-Ledger
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There is so much wisdom in this beautifully pared-back and gentle book. . . a small, quiet gem, written in English so plain that it sparkles.
— Anne Susskind, The Sydney Morning Herald
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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.
— Joan Silber, The New York Times Book Review
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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
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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, The Washington Post
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Haruf spent a life making art from our blind collisions, and Our Souls at Night is a fitting finish.
— John Reimringer, The Minneapolis Star Tribune
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Haruf once again banishes doubts. Our souls can surprise us. Beneath the surface of reticent lives—and of Haruf’s calm prose—they prove unexpectedly brave.
— Ann Hulbert, The Atlantic
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Blunt, textured, and dryly humorous. . . this quietly elegiac novel caps a fine, late-blooming and tenacious writing career. . . . Haruf’s gift is to make hay of the unexpected, and it feels like a mercy. . . . This is a novel for just after sunset on a summer’s eve, when the sky is still light and there is much to see, if you are looking.
— Wingate Packard, The Seattle Times
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A parting gift [and] a reminder of how profoundly we will miss Holt and its people, and Kent Haruf's extraordinary writing.
— Sandra Dallas, The Denver Post
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Short, spare and moving...Our Souls at Night is already creating a stir.
— Jennifer Maloney, The Wall Street Journal
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A marvelous addition to his oeuvre. . . . spare but eloquent, bittersweet yet hopeful.
— Kurt Rabin, The Fredericksburg Freelance-Star
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Lateness—and second chances—have always been a theme for Haruf. But here, in a book about love and the aftermath of grief, in his final hours, he has produced his most intense expression of that yet. . . . Packed into less than 200 pages are all the issues late life provokes.
— John Freeman, The Boston Globe
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“Short, spare, and moving.”
— Wall Street Journal
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“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
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“And just like Addie and Louis, Haruf proved that you’re never too old to reinvent yourself, take risks, find love, and write a great novel.”
— Amazon.com
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“A bittersweet story of companionship, hope and second chances…[and a] tender story of late-life romance.”
— BookPage
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“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