![]() Haruf’s depiction of Louis’s tentative, gentle stewardship of this surrogate grandchild is a set piece of tenderness and beauty. Addie’s son is entering a midlife crack-up, his marriage and career collapsing, and his mother’s choice feels like a betrayal.įor a brief period, Addie and Louis take in Addie’s grandchild, Jamie, while his parents undergo a painful separation. Just as their relationship takes flight it confronts the sheering wind of their children’s rebuke. They hold hands in public, and then kiss, and then carefully venture back into the world of simple pleasures: lunch with a companion, theatre, talking at night in the dark. Packed into less than 200 pages are all the issues late life provokes.īoth Addie and Louis feel guilt at first, but eventually their happiness gently pushes it back, as if a dish refused. ![]() In a country where so many people are living so much longer, you almost wonder why a book of this nature has not emerged sooner. The children who will never stop being children. Their lives, held on pause so long, are about to begin again, but first they must get to know each other.Īnd thus night by night, like senior-age Scheherazades, they crawl into bed and tell each other the story of their lives: the missed opportunities, the happinesses, the great and unsolvable griefs, the questions that remain.
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