409. Our Souls at Night

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Terra McKinish

Author:   Kent Haruf

Genre:   Fiction, Romance

179 pages, published May 26, 2015

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

In the small town of Holt, Colorado, widow Addie Moore pays an unexpected visit to her neighbor and widower Louis Waters to ask him is whether he would be interested spending time with her in her bed so they can each have someone to talk with.  While initially surprised, Louis agrees to try it out.  They share with each other their troubled pasts, their youthful aspirations and middle-age disappointments and compromises.  They both are happy to at last feel understood by another person.  However, their unusual arrangement results in the disapproval of their children, threatening the close bond they had formed.

Quotes 

“Who does ever get what they want? It doesn’t seem to happen to many of us if any at all. It’s always two people bumping against each other blindly, acting out old ideas and dreams and mistaken understandings.”

 

“I do love this physical world. I love this physical life with you. And the air and the country. The backyard, the gravel in the back alley. The grass. The cool nights. Lying in bed talking with you in the dark.”

 

“Who would have thought at this time in our lives that we’d still have something like this. That it turns out we’re not finished with changes and excitements. And not all dried up in body and spirit.”

 

“I made up my mind I’m not going to pay attention to what people think. I’ve done that too long—all my life. I’m not going to live that way anymore.”

 

“But we didn’t know anything in our twenties when we were first married. It was all just instinct and the patterns we’d grown up with.”

 

“Who would have thought at this time in our lives that we’d still have something like this.”

 

“Not like I was. I’ve come to believe in some kind of afterlife. A return to our true selves, a spirit self. We’re just in this physical body till we go back to spirit.”

 

My Take

Although it is a short book, Our Souls at Night has a big impact.  A beautiful story of a man and woman and their late in life attempt to find happiness and honesty.  A simply told, thoughtful and touching book.