The father of the child was a summer romance, long since gone, and Victoria's aloneness echoes throughout much of Plainsong. She's also, we find out early in the book, pregnant: a condition her mother finds unacceptable and she doesn't so much throw Victoria out as deny her access to her home. Victoria Roubideaux is 17-years old and in high school. The salient bits, however, are well drawn. Some are school teachers and there are farmers and shopkeepers and none of these vocations depend on a when or even a why. Some of the characters drive pickup trucks. After a while we find that this isn't important: in fact, it enhances the feeling of small town peace. Plainsong is set in a small Colorado hamlet, though the when is never clear.
Author Kent Haruf hones the feeling of simplicity with simple language - well used - and a sharp focus on character rather than place or even action. The real triumph for Plainsong is not for the characters, but for their creator. Rather, the struggles we see detailed are wonderfully real and simply drawn with a story that hinges on such mortal - almost homely - challenges that the reading is a soothing passage to a quiet place. No clattering crescendo for the triumph of good over evil. A simple story of individual struggle with human problems dealt with in a very human way. any simple and unadorned melody or air," and Plainsong is precisely that. On the first page, we are told that a plainsong is, ". His performance highlights every shading of this superb New York Times best-seller.Plainsong is the most perfectly named book imaginable. Narrator Tom Stechschulte captures the subtle changes that bring the men, women, and children together. As the chapters of these people’s lives alternate throughout Plainsong, loneliness and need are transformed into nourishing bonds. When Guthrie helps two elderly ranchers take the young woman into their home, an unlikely extended family is born. Victoria, one of his students, is pregnant, homeless, and vulnerable to the scorn of the town. Thoughtful and honest, he is guiding them through a world that is not always kind. Plainsong is “any simple and unadorned melody or air.” Direct yet elegant, Haruf’s Plainsong is a hymn to the breadth of the human spirit.Ī high school history teacher in a small Colorado town, Guthrie is raising his two young sons alone.
Before the opening chapter of this novel, Haruf offers a definition. Kent Haruf has received prestigious awards, including a special citation from the PEN/Hemingway Foundation for his finely-tuned works.
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