Old Folks Show How it's Done

There are two memorable moments in Kent Haruf's competent, enjoyable and posthumous novel, Our Souls at Night (2015). The first is the proposal that Addie Moore make to Louis Waters that starts it all off. Addie and Louis are long spouseless and in their seventies, solitary. Addie calls on Louis and says, without much preparation, "I wonder if you would come and sleep in the night with me." The second takes place after Addie and Louis have become a couple and the local Holt, Colorado Nosey Parkers are beginning to gossip. The lovers decide to confront the talkatives directly. "They stood at the corner of Second and Main in the bright noon sun waiting for the light to change and looked straight back at the people they met and greeted them and nodded and she had her arm entwined with his and then they walked across the street to the Holt Café where he opened the door for her followed her inside. They stood waiting to be seated. People inside looked at them. They knew about half of those sitting in the café, or at least knew who they were. The girl came and said, is it the two of you?  It is, Louis said. We'd like one of those tables out in the middle."  The forthrightness, the honesty in both of these scenes is rather wonderful. And so it's sad that eventually the puritanism of the Colorado plains wins out and the novel becomes a trifle ScarletLetter-y. But good for the septuagenarians, I say, who show a lot more grit and juice than their townsfolk and family.