The decision by Addie to flout the opinions of neighbours and friends and pursue an unorthodox friendship and then more with Louis, though the road there is slow and sensitively travelled in ways that will make you hear ache with love for both Addie and Louis and the close bonds they forge, is wondrously nuanced but powerfully moving resulting in the kind of quiet, deep-seated happiness that neither expected to feel again, if ever.Īs nights spent talking before sleep move on, each comes to realise that what they thought they knew about their neighbour was incomplete and put together through gossip, half-realised conversations and tangential connection, and that maybe they are what each other needs as they move into the twilight of their lives. Thankfully Addie, and later Louis emboldened by her example, don’t care, preferring to stave off the nighttime suffocation of loneliness than meet restrictive societal expectations which seems to preference observance of arcane standards over actual, meaningful connection. She went along the sidewalk under the trees and turned in at Louis’s house.” (P. It had been warm in the day but it had turned off cool now in the evening. They lived a block apart on Cedar Street in the oldest part of town with elm trees and hackberry and a single maple grown up along the curb back from the sidewalk of the two-story houses. It was an evening in May just before full dark. “And then there was the day when Addie Moore made a call on Louis Waters. In this exquisitely rendered, poignant story of two older people, Addie Moore and Louis Waters, we find two people who are lonely in their isolation, estranged in a sense from those who belong to them and to whom they belong, and looking for some sort of meaningful connection.īut in the often closeminded small town of Holt, Colorado, the setting for all of Haruf’s books, openness to the new and the transformative is not exactly common, and when Addie suggests to Louis that they spend their nights together in chaste and platonic companionship, many people think it scandalous or risky, an abrogation of propriety and good, decent social behvaiour. While Kent Haruf’s final novel, Our Souls at Night, wasn’t written with the status quo-busting messiness of the pandemic in mind – the author penned the short but powerful novel in 2014 shortly before his death, with the book published posthumously in 2015 – it does go deep into the heart of one of the central themes of recent times, belonging and connection, both of which have proven difficult to keep alive when social gatherings, travel and physical intimacy have been in soul-sapping short supply. Happiness has been in short supply over the last couple of years as the COVID pandemic has run rife through once iron-clad certainties and disrupted lives in ways that were unpredictable and often unceasing. This book will make you think about older age differently.(cover image courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia) Just because you get to a certain age doesn’t mean you can’t find love and happiness. One of them a man he didn’t particularly like. ‘The next day he worked in the yard in the morning and mowed the lawn and ate lunch and took a short nap and then went down to the bakery and drank coffee with a group of men he met with every other week. The tragedy of it all is that the author wrote it for his wife Cathy as he was dying and didn’t live long enough to see it published.Ī movie of the same name starring Jane Fonda and Robert Redford is equally as good although there are some slight changes in story.Īn uplifting and beautiful read of only 179 pages where every sentence is carefully considered. It’s much like watching a budding flower blossom, you hold you breath at the beauty of it knowing that it can’t last. We are given a voyeuristic view into their growing relationship and the challenges they face. This is a gentle and touching read full of hope and anticipation. One evening, Addie decides to do something about her loneliness by inviting Louis to stay with her each night. Addie Moore and Louis Waters are neighbours and have known each other for years. The story is set in a small town in America where everyone knows everyone and where there’s not much that’s missed. Our Souls At Night is a very sweet and tender read about two lonely people in their seventies.
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