The Washington Post
- Ron Charles
…Haruf may be the most muted master in American fiction: our anti-Franzen. Haruf's…novels are as plain and fortifying as steel-cut oatmeal: certified 100-percent irony-free, guaranteed to wither magic realism, stylistic flourishes and postmodern gimmicks…At its best, Benediction offers deceptively simple "little dramas, the routine moments" of small-town life, stripped to their elemental details. Haruf's minimalism achieves more emotional impact than seems possible with such distilled material and so few words…He produces the kind of scenes that Hemingway might have written had he survived the ravages of depression.
Publishers WeeklyIn Holt, the fictional Colorado town where all of Haruf's novels are set, longtime resident Dad Lewis is dying of cancer.
