The last two years before I retired, I shared a small, cramped, noisy office with two co-workers. We got to know each other quite well, quickly learning each other’s quirks and follies, likes and dislikes—acquiring more personal information than otherwise would be normally learned in a working environment. One of my office mates was/is, like me, an avid reader and movie buff. We'd often take short breaks to chat about the books we were reading, the films we saw, offering suggestions, comments, and opinions to one another. It was our very own private book club.

Mike shot me an email a few weeks ago recommending that I read the four novels of Kent Haruf, a resident of Murphysboro, Illinois and a teacher at Southern Illinois University. He suggested that I start with Plainsong , Haruf's most popular and successful book, and continue with Eventide, the sequel. So, again, off to he library I trotted—well, I actually drove, but you get the drift—and picked up the hardcopy first edition of Plainsong¹ and the audio CDs of Eventide². I'll let Mike tell you why he loves these books. Here's what he wrote in his email:

"The style is so careful, simple, and down-to-earth. The dialog is brilliant and spot on. He doesn't show off. His characters are like that too, at least the good ones are. His style seems to mimic the simplicity of small town life on the high plains.  I spent a few years in my 20s in northeastern Colorado, so his books remind me of those years and those people. And he doesn't sugar-coat the West. Some of the events are tragic and some of the people are deeply flawed (and just plain nasty), but that's small town life in the West. He doesn't idealize it. And it takes a masterful writer to achieve that kind of realism."

I, too, like Mike, in my late twenties sojourned in Colorado, but most of my time was spent in the large metropolis of Denver and on the ski slopes of Aspen. Hence, I did not get a chance to see first-hand the true atmosphere of a small town of the West that Mike mentioned and Haruf wrote about. And so, I delved into this mid-Westerner's writings in the hopes of gaining some insights and perhaps to enjoy a good, rip-roarin' read. For some reason, I started with the audio version of Eventide, listening to the seven CDs over the course of three nights before falling asleep. Well, actually, they kept me wide wake...

There are some books, as we all know, that are considered "chick lit", meant for and about women. There are some books that seem to be geared for a male readership and may not appeal to the general audience of both genders. Plainsong and Eventide are two of the latter. Maybe it was the voice of George Hearn, the reader of the text of Eventide. His gruff, gravel voice was a tad too annoying—there were times when I wanted him to clear his throat and swallow. Maybe it was the all too stark crispness and reality of the language that disturbed me, or maybe it was the suggested and often—more than I could handle—graphic events that turned me away from enjoying the novel. Certainly, I was not enamored of most of the characters; but, then, with Haruf's stark, almost Hemingway-ish writing style, I don't think I was supposed to. As Mike says, "That’s small town life in the West.”

However, I did persevere and completed my listening of the complete, unabridged CD set and immediately moved on, when I had finished and had gotten some sleep, to Plainsong.

Books, in my opinion, take on different connotations and less subtle nuances when listened to, rather than being read. Some books are more enjoyable when "acted out" by a good reader; for prime examples: the mysteries of Lisa Scottolini and the spy novels of John Le Carré. Both authors are best appreciated when heard. These two novels of Haruf are also best appreciated "on tape", even if the male reader's voice is a bit grating. For one, I have difficulty reading dialogue without the benefit of quotation marks. For two, I also have problems with overly descriptive run on sentences, even if they do remind me of Ernest Hemingway. The hardcopy version of Plainsong had both and, thus, I had a difficult time ferreting out what was being spoken, what words were thought by a character, or what text was narration and description.

"Plainsong", as defined in the beginning of the book, "is the unisonous vocal music used in the Christian church from the earliest times; any simple and unadorned melody or air". I understand that by incorporating a literary version of this type of music in his writing style, Haruf seems to be emulating the songs of the small town of Holt, Colorado, with all its harmonies and disharmonies between its residents—their atonal tragedies, their liltingly small successes in their daily lives, the intertwining and interweaving of their melodies with one another. I found these aspects of the novel intriguing. I also found Haruf's characterizations and dialogue, like Mike found, strong and spot-on, albeit, sometimes, as I said, too starkly real.

This in no way is meant to deter you from picking up a copy of each of these two novels and settling in with them. They are, all in all, very well written and are sure to captivate many a reader. But they are just not quite my taste, having more of a masculine bent to them than I currently would care to read—even though I did. I would recommend, however, that if you do decide to read them that you do so in order: Plainsong first, then Eventide. And I would also suggest that you listen to them, rather than read them, in order to capture the essentially finer shades of interaction between all of the protagonists.

After all, a melody is meant to be vocalized, even if it is written in plainsong. 

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^{1 ©}1999 by Kent Haruf; published by Alfred A Knopf, Inc., New York, NY.
^{2 ©}2004 by Kent Haruf; Books on Tape, Santa Ana, CA, with arrangement with Random House Audio Publishing Group, Random House, Inc., New York, NY. Read by George Hearn.