BENEDICTION by Kent Haruf

Benediction is the title of Kent Haruf’s most recent novel (published 2013).  The novel takes place in now familiar Holt, Colorado some 100 miles north of Denver in the plains.  To finish my recuperation from the norovirus last week I read this novel in just three days.

Haruf successfully throws out the formulae approach to novel writing with a primary protagonist, conflict and story arc.  Instead, this novel gives us a “slice of life” view of about an eight month period.  There are multiple stories of Dad Lewis dying, the Johnson’s, a grandmother raising her granddaughter after her mother dies of cancer and minister who has the audacity to take Jesus seriously.

Haruf has his own unique style, doesn’t put conversations in quotations and rarely uses “he/she said” clauses.  The affect is to draw the reader closer in to the conversation almost as if you were sitting in the scene with the characters.   

The book begins with Dad Lewis learning of his terminal diagnosis and ends with his death from lung cancer.  Haruf gives the most accurate yet unsentimental description of death I have ever read.  A decade ago following my mother’s death I volunteered at a hospice.  I learned to care for the dying in the most human way.  Being a male, I was asked to bathe and shave the men because they were uncomfortable with female nurses or volunteers helping them with these tasks.  A great deal of comfort can be found in simple, everyday aspects of life.

From a writer’s perspective it’s refreshing that novels don’t need to be plot driven, conflict laden stories.  Novels can be about what happens to ordinary people, in a small town on the desert.