CompleteMartialArts.com - Plainsong
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List Price: $13.95
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Manufacturer: Vintage
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780375705854
ISBN: 0375705856
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 301
Publication Date: 2000-08-22
Publisher: Vintage
Studio: Vintage
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Editorial Reviews:
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"Ambitious, but never seeming so, Kent Haruf reveals a whole community as he interweaves the stories of a pregnant high school girl, a lonely teacher, a pair of boys abandoned by their mother, and a couple of crusty bachelor farmers. From simple elements, Haruf achieves a novel of wisdom and grace--a narrative that builds in strength and feeling until, as in a choral chant, the voices in the book surround, transport, and lift the reader off the ground."
-FROM THE CITATION FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: An Interesting yet Simple Story
Comment: This is one of those books that I finished questioning rather or not I liked it. There are many horrific events in this novel that I didn't enjoy reading, yet it is written in such a way that you are compelled to read more. And in continuing the story you are rewarded with some lovely acts of humanity.
For me, the overall theme of this book was finding one's self. There are two children and a teen that, through events mostly out of their control, are forced to grow up quickly, and in doing so find their true selves. Also the majority of adults in this story are put into scenarios where they must redefined who they truly are. The main characters in this book are rather likable. I especially loved the quirky old farm brothers. The villains, however, have no redeemable traits.
The authors simple writing style is quite inviting and he is able to almost seamlessly merge several different story lines. However his lack of quotation marks around the dialog drove me crazy and I didn't understand the meaning behind it. I also feel the story ended rather abruptly, leaving me unsatisfied. There is a followup book, "Eventide", that I will probably be checking out, though I can't say I am in a terrible rush to do so.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The gift to be simple
Comment: Seldom was a book so well titled. Plains-song, the song of the high plains east of the Rockies. Plain-song, a simple story told exquisitely simply, using ordinary Anglo-Saxon words and quite devoid of purple passages. And plainsong, as in the worship of the early church, for Kent Haruf's portrait of the small-town life of rural America, though containing its share of stupidity and wrong, is in the end an act of worship.
The core cast is relatively small: a pregnant teenager, two middle-aged bachelors living on an isolated farm, a high-school teacher trying to bring up two sons more or less on his own, and one of his female colleagues. These few characters drive the plot. Nothing happens that is really earth-shattering, but it is special because it happens to THEM. They are the ones who make mistakes and must try to rectify them; they are the ones who reach out in unexpected ways to others, linking this collection of rounded but disparate individuals into a caring community.
Yet this is a book of contrasts. It can bring a lump to the throat with moments of warmth and kindness, but just when it risks getting sappy it takes a darker turn. The teacher who had seemed a pillar of strength is shown to have feet of clay; the teenager makes an almost disastrous choice on impulse; the young boys become victims of an act of wanton malice. The novel's theme and simple style should recommend it as a book for young adults, but the picture is by no means sanitized: the doctor offers the young woman the option of aborting her baby, and there are scenes involving drugs or promiscuity. Haruf's belief in the fundamental goodness of human nature is rooted in realism, and is the stronger for it.
One measure of the strength of this book is the degree to which it made me aware of its literary pedigree. There is an obvious debt to Thornton Wilder's play, OUR TOWN. And, moving westward, to WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson, GILEAD by Marilynne Robinson, or THE RED PONY by John Steinbeck. For me, these books stand as a personal touchstone for one of the richest and most humane strands of American writing. I am thrilled to be able to add Kent Haruf to such a list.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Just luminous.
Comment: I've read this book at least three times and its spare, delicate voice moves me every time. I feel myself connect with the characters, come to care about them, through the SPACE Haruf leaves with that language as simple as the Colorado plains (which I've visited a number of times, and they are as stripped and desolate as parts of the story are). Haruf's ability to juxtapose life's harshness (divorce, violent or natural death, getting bullied into growing up) with incredible tenderness, as with the Victoria-McGuthrie subplot, is remarkable. I adore this book, just adore it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Visit to Colorado
Comment: Plainson appears to be a narrative of a visit to a small town in Colorado. The author brings the reader into the ongoing lives of people. Characters and personalities are introduced. Everyone has their problems (maybe more than in some places)and they go about their lives. The reader leaves as unobtrusively as arriving. There is no resolution to the text (just as often happens in real life) except that maybe the presence of new life in the form of a baby binds people together in hope. There is the feeling that the story goes on. I thought the book started slowly and then found myself hooked. The author weaves the reader into the events so you can't wait to see what happens next. There is no climax in the plot - just good people and not so good people going about life in their own way. It remineded me of the play "Our Town". By the way, I did not read this book but listened to it on tape. The performance was superb. I would highly recommend it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Quiet charm
Comment: "Here was this man Tom Guthrie in Holt standing at the back window in the kitchen of his house smoking cigarettes and looking out over the back lot where the sun was just coming up." This is the first line of Plainsong, a novel set in Holt, Colorado, a fictional town on the edge of the prairie. And it is quiet moments like this that are the joy of this book.
There are no unexpected plot twists in Plainsong. There is little action other than small-town fistfights. But it is a poetic and gentle and real. And it is surprising how much it draws you in. The characters are vivid and the dialogue is excellent. There is not an over-written word in the book.
The story is of the intertwining lives of several characters: a high-school teacher whose wife has become too depressed to leave bed but eventually finds the energy to leave him and his two sons; a pregnant high-school girl and the teacher who tries to help her; and two brothers who live on their farm 17 miles out of Holt and have little interest beyond their gates.
Plainsong was a deserving National Book Award finalist and an unlikely national bestseller. Describing the plot doesn't do it justice. You kind of just have to be there.
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