Gently Last Summer 
 "Tell all the truth, but tell it slant." The late Kent Haruf certainly paid attention to the first half of Emily Dickinson's famous dictum, but totally ignored the second; there is no writer I know who told the truth more straight. I could pick a few sentences almost anywhere to illustrate this, for no part is more climactic or highly colored than any other, just simple straightforward writing like this, an old man and an old woman taking a young boy to the county fair: 
 They didn't buy tickets to go into the rodeo stands but walked down past the far end and looked over the fence at the calf roping and bull riding. There was a quarter-mile horse race on the dirt track and they watched as the horses galloped by, the jockeys standing up now in their irons after they had passed the finish line, the horses wide-nostriled and stirred up. Then they went back to the car and drove home and the boy got the dog out of Louis's kitchen and they had supper on the front porch as the day was ending.Typing that last sentence out just now, I kept looking to see if I was missing any punctuation. But that's the thing; there isn't any; one thing follows another naturally and simply and that's how it's meant to be. I wonder if Kent Haruf know that he was dying when writing this? The book has the air of a gentle farewell, a lingering summer on the Colorado plains with the sky above and the mountains in the distance. Memories of a long life with its share of mistakes and frustrations, but none of that mattering so much any more. 
 The concept is extremely simple. A seventy-year-old widow, Addie Moore, calls on her similarly situated neighbor, Louis Waters, and asks if he would like to come over to share her bed some nights. Not for sex, just companionship and talk. He agrees and they find themselves growing fond of each other, heedless of the disapproval of some in the town. At the start of the summer, Addie's six-year-old grandson Jamie comes to join them from the other side of the state, as his parents are having trouble. The shared challenge of healing the troubled youngster bathes the novella deeper waters, but the bonds thus formed will prove difficult to untie when the summer ends. 
 I admit, there are those who will look at this brief poetic book and see an Emperor without clothes, but I happen to think His Majesty looks better naked. If I start asking questions such as why, for instance, Addie and Louis do not simply get married, I could poke holes in the story too, and perhaps knock off a star or two. But then I think of the radiant simplicity that compelled me take the book home almost as soon as I opened it in the store. A rare vision like Haruf's deserves all the honors that can be heaped upon it, even posthumously.