Cecily's Reviews > Our Souls at Night

“We're still talking. For as long as we can. For as long as it lasts.”

To paraphrase, Marshall McLuhan, to what extent is the medium the message?

Before I read this, and for most of the time I was reading it, I thought it was about the visceral human need for communication and company. And it is. But as I approached the end, I realised it was at least as much about how the emotional impact and engagement of conversations are affected by the medium used.

Situation (not Plot)

Addie (70) and Louis (similar) are lonely neighbours who, at her suggestion, start spending the night together, for companionship and especially to talk. Addie and Louis discuss their pasts (they don’t know each other very well): joys, heartbreaks, the ordinary, and the many things they wish they had done differently.

“It’s a kind of mystery… Being here in the dark of night. The talking. Hearing you breathe next to me if I wake up.”

Despite initial discretion, neighbours notice, gossip, and affect shock, while Addie and Louis’ adult children are embarrassed and angry. That’s it.

The Medium is the Message?

Our interactions vary, even with the same person, according to the medium (as well as the context and relationship): across the dinner table, down the phone, via instant messaging, email, or snail mail. Sign language would be different again.

These issues are key in Addie and Louis’ relationships, past and present, but it was only towards the end that I realised it, along with the earlier significance of Jamie’s attachment to his phone.

It’s easy to replace quality with quantity: obsessive texting, rather than living in the present and engaging with those directly in front of us. (Or perhaps texting those directly in front of us!) It’s only when forced to rely on a more detached medium that we fully realise what we have lost.

As the parent of a twenty-something at university, I miss the quotidian, casual conversations that arose in a shared home. I rejoice at the wonder of technology, even as I mourn the veil of detachment inherent in it. In theory, we’re constantly available, but available for what?

Skin Hunger

Touch feels at least as important as words: a touch is worth a thousand pictures (so, a million words?!). But the wrong touch, even if not physically painful, can be more agonising than the thrill of the intimate touches we crave from those we love.

“I just want to live simply and pay attention to what’s happening each day.”
Touch is not a motive for Addie and Louis, but the tangibility of the world is important to them. When Louis first comes over, he needs to see the whole house, to know where he is, physically. Later, they discuss how much they love what is around them and the aspects of life they share: “And the air and the country. The backyard, the gravel in the back alley. The grass. The cool nights. Lying in bed talking with you in the dark.” Simple pleasures. But important. It’s a way of being grounded in the moment - all the more poignant because they are conscious that moments are slipping away.

Sex is not a motive either, even though they are fairly young old people. That’s fine for them as individuals, just as long as it doesn’t feed into the erroneous assumption that older people in general don’t have or even want much sex. (If Haruf had made them older, the camping trip might have stretched credulity, it would have been unusual to have such a young grandson, and tricky for friend Ruth to be almost a generation older than them.)

Family Obligations

Families are at the heart of this story: the one we are born into, the ones we create or drift into, the ones we escape, and the alternative groupings we sometimes forge to fill the void created by loss, disappointment, boredom, or betrayal. When one’s family is flawed, the desire to build something better is overwhelming, even if it is impossible to achieve.

There are all forms of abandonment here, but very little self-pity: loss of parents, partners, siblings, and children, lost by death or walking away. Even the dog is from a rescue shelter, and some baby mice are abandoned by their mother, to the anxiety of a boy abandoned by his own mother. These people don’t suppress their pain, but they don’t indulge it either. They look for pragmatic solutions - such as sharing a bed with a near stranger for company, although if Addie read the BBC News website today, she might have considered an inter-generational befriending scheme instead, such as one of those described HERE.

Addie and Louis have to figure out how much they should worry about, let alone be constrained by what other people think. It can be fun to challenge town busybodies, but family are another matter.

“I am behaving. I’m doing what I want and it isn’t hurting anyone.”
What do we owe our family in terms of outward respectability, and how much freedom do they owe us? Parents may have firm expectations of their children, but even if they are fair and reasonable ones, should those children hold their parents to similar, or higher, standards?

Letting go of one’s children is hard, but it is usually a positive step towards the autonomy of adulthood. Letting go of one’s parents will be harder. But before that, is the possibility of the opposite: parenting one’s parents, their declining independence reigning in one’s own. I strive not to leverage my increasing role in my parents’ lives to limit their freedom and choices beyond what is essential, but it’s tricky - especially defining “essential”.

A Plain Song at Eventide

This book opens, mid-thought, “And then there was the day when…”, which is apt, as conversational backstory fills many of the pages.

It has the plain language of Plainsong (my review HERE) and Eventide (my review HERE), and is set in the same town, at the eventide of Addie and Louis’ lives (and written at Haruf’s), but it rarely attains quite the same heights of poetic simplicity. That helps eschew the sentimentality it could have succumbed to.

Here, the poignancy is in the situation, rather than the language. A situation infused with tender beauty and quiet pain, balanced by tentative, hopeful grasps of happiness.

Fiction within Fiction

All Haruf’s novels are set in the fictional town of Holt, Colorado, and some share characters. In this, Addie and Louis discuss the possibility of seeing a stage production of Haruf’s best-known novel, Plainsong, but Louis is not keen, as he doesn’t think it very realistic.

“He could write a book about us”, suggests Addie. Well, he did. And it’s beautiful. I hope Louis doesn’t mind; he told Addie, “I don’t want to be in any book”, but I’m glad that he is. I believed in Plainsong, but I believe in Addie and Louis even more.

Other Quotes

• “The stars were all shining and there were the farmlights and yardlights all looking blue in the dark, Everything looking normal, except nothing was normal anymore, everything was at some kind of cliff’s edge.”

• “Outside the dark bedroom suddenly the wind came up and blew hard in the open windows whipping the curtains back and forth. Then it started to rain… Doesn’t it smell lovely.”

• “Louis put his hand out of the open window and caught the rain dripping off the eaves and came to bed and touched his wet hand on Addie’s soft cheek.”

• “We had that long time of joined life, even if it wasn’t good for either one of us. That was our history.”

• Slight spoiler (view spoiler)[: “It was not the same lighthearted pleasure and discovery. And gradually there were nights when he stayed home… They still held each other… more out of habit and desolation and anticipated loneliness and disheartenment, as if they were trying to store up the moments together against what was coming.” (hide spoiler)]

• The ending was not quite as I expected, and all the better for that. Slight spoiler (view spoiler)[: After a forced and probably permanent separation, they talk on the phone: “It's like when we started… Except we're careful now... We're still talking. For as long as we can. For as long as it lasts.” (hide spoiler)]


For those who are distracted by such things (Apatt, for one), there are no quotation marks to indicate dialogue. It’s not confusing, and is integral to the plain aesthetic, but minimalism isn’t for everyone.

Image source for “the medium is message” and open book:
http://www.brafton.com/wp-content/upl...