"His finest-tuned tale yet. . . . There is a deep, satisfying music to this book, as Haruf weaves between such a large cast of characters in so small a space. . . . Strangely, wonderfully, the moment of a man's passing can be a blessing in the way it brings people together.
Benediction recreates this powerful moment so gracefully it is easy to forget that, like [the town of] Holt, it is a world created by one man." --John Freeman,
The Boston Globe "A quiet and profound statement about endings, about change and death and endurance, and about the courage it takes to finally let go. . . . What's remarkable is Haruf's ability, once again, to square quotidian events with what it means to be alive and bound in ordinary pleasure with ordinary people [with] a matter-of-fact tone, with spare declarative sentences and plain-speak among the characters that is, in its bare-bones clarity, often heartbreakingly authentic." --Debra Gwartney,
The Oregonian
"What Haruf makes of this patch of ground is magic [and]
Benediction spreads its blessing over the entire town. Haruf isn't interested in evil so much as the frailties that defeat us - loneliness, a failure to connect with one another, the lack of courage to change. . . . [He] makes us admire his characters' ability not only to carry on but also to enjoy simple pleasures." --Dan Cryer,
San Francisco Chronicle
"We've waited a long time for an invitation back to Holt, home to Kent Haruf's novels. . . He may be the most muted master in American fiction [and]
Benediction seems designed to catch the sound of those fleeting good moments [with] scenes Hemingway might have written had he survived." --Ron Charles,
Washington Post
"A lovely book, surprisingly rich in character and event without any sense of being crowded. . . . Haruf is a master in summing up the drama that already exists in life, if you just pay attention." --Harper Barnes,
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Absorbing [and] evocative. . . . Haruf doesn't offer us any facile reconciliations. The blessings in
Benediction are [not] easily won. For that very reason they are all the more believable and all the more unforgettable." - Richard Wakefield,
The Seattle Times "Splendid. . . . As the expertly crafted structure of
Benediction emerges, it becomes clear that [Haruf's many] characters trace the arc of a life. . . as we join [a good but flawed man] in his deepening appreciation for those around him, while counting down the remaining hours, in his life and our own." --Mike Fischer,
Portland Press Herald
"Remarkable. . . . Haruf paints indelible portraits of drifting days that reveal unexpected blessings. . . . We may not always recognize the best moments--maybe because they are often as simple as eating off the good china at a backyard picnic--but he understands their power to make us human." --Connie Ogle,
The Miami Herald "Itself a blessing. . . spare and unencumbered. . . . Haruf's great skill is in describing the plain ways of people who live in small places [and the war] going on between good and evil that we recognize as part of our nature. This is what makes
Benediction a universal story, not a hometown tale." --Michael D. Langan,
The Buffalo News "Quiet, and intimate, and beautiful." --Lisa McLendon,
The Wichita Eagle "If Hemingway had had more soul, he would've written a book like
Benediction." --Emma Broder,
The Chicago Maroon "Incisive, elegiac, and rhetorically rich. . . his finest expression yet of an aesthetic vision that, in spite of its exacting verisimilitude, achieves a mythic dimension rare in contemporary fiction. . . . Haruf's art is rigorous but transparent. Scene after scene, we appreciate that we are in the hands of a master of complex storytelling disguised as simple observation. . . . Reading [him], I am often reminded of the great Russian realists, who have a similar compressed intensity and who spent much of their writing time examining the lives of ordinary people living in small communities in wide-open spaces." --Kevin Stevens,
The Dublin Review of Books "
Benediction suggests there's no end to the stories Haruf can tell about Holt or to the tough, gorgeous language he can summon in the process." --Paul Elie,
The New York Times Book Review "Haruf is the master of what one of his characters calls 'the precious ordinary'. . . . With understated language and startling emotional insight, he makes you feel awe at even the most basic of human gestures." --Ben Goldstein,
Esquire "Grace and restraint are abiding virtues in Haruf's fiction, and they resume their place of privilege in his new work. . . . For readers looking for the rewards of an intimate, meditative story, it is indeed a blessing." --Karen R. Long,
The Cleveland Plain Dealer "Haruf is maguslike in his gifts. . . to illuminate the inevitable ways in which tributary lives meander toward confluence. . . . Perhaps not since Hemingway has an American author triggered such reader empathy with so little reliance on the subjectivity of his characters. . . . [This] is a modestly wrought wonder from one of our finest living writers." --Bruce Machart,
The Houston Chronicle
"Both sad and surprisingly uplifting in its honest and skillful examination of death, families and friendship." --Jason Swensen,
Deseret News "As Haruf's precise details accrue, a reader gains perspective: This is the story of a man's life, and the town where he spent it, and the people who try to ease its end. . . . His sentences have the elegance of Hemingway's early work [and his] determined realism, which admits that not all of our past actions or the reasons behind them are knowable, even to ourselves, is one of the book's satisfactions." --John Reimringer,
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune "Reverberant... From the
terroir and populace of his native American West, the author of
Plainsong and
Eventide again draws a story elegant in its simple telling and remarkable in its authentic capture of universal human emotions." - Brad Hooper,
Booklist