Book review: Our Souls At Night

KENT HARUF’S final novel, Our Souls at Night, completed before he died in November last year, is a beautifully poignant swansong for this much-loved American writer.

Kent Haruf

Picador, €16.99;

ebook, €10.20

Neighbours Addie Moore and Louis Waters, both widowed and in their twilight years, have been alone for some time and Addie, for one, would like some companionship, someone to talk to at night, to overcome the stifling loneliness and isolation of later life, and Louis agrees.

So the two begin a wonderfully pure friendship that gives them both something to treasure when they thought it was too late.

Sharing their past and present, the future suddenly doesn’t look so daunting, but both of them know, too, that it can’t be taken for granted.

Tender and heartfelt, this is a delicately bittersweet novel, compounded by the very palpable sense that Haruf seems to know that this is farewell. And what a beautiful farewell it is.