Plainsong: Summary and book reviews of Plainsong by Kent Haruf, plus links to an excerpt from Plainsong and a biography of Kent Haruf.

A heartstrong story of family and romance, tribulation and tenacity, set on the High Plains east of Denver. In the small town of Holt, Colorado, a high school teacher is confronted with raising his two boys alone after their mother retreats first to the bedroom, then altogether. A teenage girl -- her father long since disappeared, her mother unwilling to have her in the house -- is pregnant, alone herself, with nowhere to go. And out in the country, two brothers, elderly bachelors, work the family homestead, the only world they've ever known. From these unsettled lives emerges a vision of life, and of the town and landscape that bind them together -- their fates somehow overcoming the powerful circumstances of place and station, their confusion, curiosity, dignity and humor intact and resonant. As the milieu widens to embrace fully four generations, Kent Haruf displays an emotional and aesthetic authority to rival the past masters of a classic American tradition. Utterly true to the rhythms and patterns of life, Plainsong is a novel to care about, believe in, and learn from.

Media Reviews

Richard Russo Kent Haruf's new novel Plainsong is nothing short of a revelation. I don't expect to read a better novel this year. Or next, for that matter. Beverly Lowry I read Plainsong in one sitting, unwilling--unable--to look up until I'd finished. Kent Haruf has given us a pure blessing of a book a novel of such sheer sweet amplitude, grace and humanity. Howard Frank Mosher Plainsong is the marvelous story of how seven extraordinary members of a tiny prairie community--two dedicated teachers, two young boys wise beyond their years, a pair of wonderfully idiosyncratic rancher brothers and a pregnant high school girl--come together, in the face of great difficulties, to form the most appealing extended family in contemporary fiction. With Plainsong, Kent Haruf has written an American masterwork a profound, witty, warmhearted and tough-minded account of a place where family and community still come first. Plainsong is the best new novel I've read since Cold Mountain. James Crumley Plainsong is a beauty, as spare and heartbreaking as an abandoned homestead cabin, always tough but humane, never sentimental. I loved the prose, as bright and hard as the winter sun sparkling off a sandy snowbank, and the characters, scrubbed to their essentials by the extremes of the Great Plains weather. It's a story that draws the reader like a heat mirage.

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated of 5 by Taryn R.
It's life
Incredible book. I don't see why so many people are rating it "1" out of 5. Yes, there are graphic scenes, but that is life. People can't seem to handle the virtuosic novel and all of the facts it gives. It is so simply written that it...   Read More

Rated of 5 by DJ
Good book
Okay, here's the thing. This book is called Plainsong. I think that there is a point to the whole thing with no quotations and minimal punctuation. This book was real, and it takes maturity to read it, which is why I'm glad it was an option for my...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Rachel
How in the World Did This Trash Get Published
My younger sister had to read this book for a school assignment, so I decided to take a look at it. What a mistake, this book is a nightmare to read. Mr. Haruf does not seem to like quotations, or any form of punctuation for that matter. This book...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Noel J. O'Neill
A very smooth read....
In my travels I listen to many books on CD. Since I am in a couple's book club, I was really on the alert for a good conversational book that we all might enjoy. Finally after reading Plainsong, I knew this was the one I would pick. From my...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Anony Mouse
Approved Porn
NOT, by me. I did not like the book. I had to read it with my child as a school project. I can understand why the teacher who was later fired for sexually harassing a student chose this book. It was the Jerry Springer show in a book. [spoiler...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Bronwyn Davis
I've been retired from teaching high school English for a few years now, but were I still teaching, I would seriously consider assigning Kent Haruf's "Plainsong" to my Junior and Senior classes. It has all of the elements of a true...   Read More

...20 More Reader Reviews

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