our souls at night book discussion questions

Addie initiates the calls between them and they begin to talk regularly again. Destroyed, Louis solemnly continues his routines around the house and in town until Addie calls him one day from her cell phone. A spare yet eloquent, bittersweet yet inspiring story of a man and a woman who, in advanced age, come together. That fall, Addie breaks her hip and goes to live in a retirement home near Gene and Jamie. Their brave adventurestheir pleasures and their difficultiesare hugely involving and truly resonant, making Our Souls at Night the perfect final installment to this beloved writer’s enduring contribution to American literature. Addie and Louis have one more, sad night then they stop seeing each other. When Addie tries to call Jamie, Gene refuses to let her speak to him because she continues her relationship with Louis. That weekend, Gene takes Jamie home with him because Jamie’s mother agreed to come back to the house. Louis leaves in a fury and Addie tells Gene he should be ashamed of himself. Gene denounces their relationship as something disgusting and tells them to stop immediately. A weekend visit from Jamie’s father, Gene, destroys Addie and Louis’s peace. Deciding not to tell Jamie about Ruth’s death, the couple continues with their summer. Later in the week, after dinner with Louis, Addie, and Jamie at Ruth’s house, Ruth goes to the bank and collapses. To help Jamie enjoy his summer and also to be with each other, Addie and Louis take him to a softball game, the Rocky Mountains to go camping, and restaurants.Įventually, Jamie meets Louis and Addie’s elderly neighbor Ruth who quickly takes to the boy. With Bonnie, Jamie feels more comfortable and begins to settle in for the summer. Louis, who meets the boy, decides to get him a dog who they later call Bonnie. He cries every night until Addie takes him into her bed to comfort him. That summer, Jamie, Addie’s grandson, stays with her in the house. One day, Gene drops his son off at Addie’s house asking that she look after the boy because Gene’s wife left him. It put Addie in the middle of their resentment. Louis’s affair causes him to be brutally hard on himself, while Connie’s death ruined Gene, Addie’s son, and Carl’s relationship. These events affect the way that each character behaves with the other and how each thinks about their own self. A car hit her, and Connie died in the hospital a few hours later. Addie then recounts the story of her daughter, Connie, who, while playing with her brother in the yard, ran out into the street. After ruining Tamara’s marriage, he returned to his family. A story about growing old with grace.Addie Moore and Louis Waters.

After relating the parts of their lives that are common knowledge, they begin to delve into the deeper, more painful memories that they have.įor instance, Louis tells Addie about his affair with a fellow school teacher named Tamara and how he left Diane and his young daughter to live with Tamara and her daughter. I loved Our Souls at Night David Nicholls, author of One Day.This is a love story. Addie tells Louis about her eventually cold relationship with her husband, Carl, who died in church one Sunday morning. Louis tells Addie how his wife, Diane, lost the will to live as she wasted away from terminal cancer.

Despite their words, the two continue because they believe they have finally found some light after the death of their spouses.Įach night, Louis and Addie recount parts of their past to each other and become closer for it. Their arrangement immediately comes under fire from the other elderly folks. How would you like that?' To which Louis replies, 'I don't want to be in any book.Kent Haruf’s novel, Our Souls at Night, tells the tale of the unlikely love found when Addie Moore proposes that her neighbor, Louis Waters, sleeps in the same bed as her because the nights are lonely. Addie even notes, 'He could write a book about us. Haruf even ventures gently into the metafictional realm, as Louis and Addie go to see a play based on Haruf's novel Benediction (which actually debuted at a Denver theater in 2013) and debate its authenticity and logic. It's a quick burst of heartbreak in what Haruf otherwise portrays as a pair of long, quiet lives. When he and his wife reunite, Jamie goes to live with them again, and Gene refuses to let his mother see Jamie unless she breaks up with Louis.

So Gene now resents Louis, suspects him of shaming his mother and wanting to take her money - on which Gene is relying, since his business is going bankrupt. Gene’s own relationship with his deceased father was strained, as his sister died young and her father never recovered from it, and always seemed to blame Gene for her death - in which, while Gene was chasing her with a garden hose, she ran into the street and was hit by a car.

Our souls at night book discussion questions