Plainsong - Kent Haruf

 Kent Haruf, whom I admit I'd never heard of, wrote a handful of novels, all set in the fictional town of Holt, Colorado.  Plainsong (1999) was his 'middle' novel, and apparently most successful, winning a bunch of literary prizes.

What Haruf pulls off here is an ordinary domestic drama, handled so tenderfully, so delicately, that it becomes something much more.  Yet we lack more or less all detail.  We get only superficial descriptions of the main characters.  The landscape is evoked but never nailed down.  Everything is entrusted to atmosphere and dialogue.  The characters reveal themselves in the way they talk, albeit most of the time they are exchanging superficial politeness.  And yet the story throbs with life.  The characters draw us in.

There are basically two stories at play.  They only come together in the last chapter.  Teacher Tom Guthrie's wife has suffered some sort of breakdown.  She spends all her time in bed until she ups and moves to her sister's apartment in Denver.  It quickly becomes apparent she is never coming back to Holt.  So Tom is left with two young boys to bring up.  Meanwhile sixteen year old Victoria Roubideaux falls pregnant.  The boy wants nothing to do with her.  Her mother throws her out of the house.  Her only recourse is schoolteacher Maggie Jones, who takes her in but can't keep her because of her senile father.  So she places Victoria with two elderly bachelor brothers, Harold and Raymond McPheron, at their farm outside of town.  The relationship that builds between the young girl and the two old men is probably the most beautiful thing in the book.  The iron-hard oldsters also provide an element of gentle comedy.

Tom is subject to a complaint from the aggressive parents of a loutish student.  The student himself takes out his resentment on Tom's sons, ten year old Ike and eight year old Bobby.  This moment of malice somehow equates to the farm-life in which animals are sometimes brutally born yet gently eased into death.  The detail of a calf being successfully yanked out of its mother by the McPherons and Ike's horse being put to sleep by the local vet stand out powerfully from the soft pastoral background.

Plainsong is an extraordinary book, highly recommended.  For once, the 'big name' introduction - by Peter Carey - adds to our understanding and appreciation of what follows.