Recently Read Books: Plainsong

Plainsong by Kent Haruf

This book was unusual. The story was unusual. The way it was written was unusual. The lack of quotation marks was unusual. It was a plain story, but with an underlying sweetness.

The setting, a little no-account town in Colorado. The characters: Two pre-teen brothers who deliver newspapers. Their father, a high school teacher who is unwilling to let a lazy student pass his class. Their mother, who suffers from depression and leaves home. A pregnant high school girl who needs a place to live. And the three connectors in the story: two bachelor brothers who farm, and the middle-aged high school secretary named Maggie. While I didn’t like everything about this book, I did enjoy its focus: these are real, unremarkable, everyday, plain folk. They are plodding along. They might remind you of someone in your town who is struggling. They are real people. They need kindness. And among them, there are some real good-hearted ones who see under people’s plainness and treat them as though they matter.