New fiction: Our Souls At Night
Kent Haruf's last novel has just been published posthumously
Kent Haruf died at the end of last year and if you haven’t read his wonderful backlist before (set in a small town in Colorado), now is the time to discover it. Or you could jump in at the end, with this last novel, a moving, graceful story of an elderly man and woman who attempt to defy convention and find a new way of living their lives.
Widowed Addie Moore heads over to her neighbour Louis Waters with an unusual proposition: as their nights are so lonesome, why don’t they spend them together? They share a bed, talk about their pasts and let the slow sweep of their days take on a shared sweetness. But family disapproval intrudes on their idyll; a melancholy reminder that happiness can be a fragile affair.
Our Souls At Night by Kent Haruf (Picador, £12.99)