Benediction

Benediction by Kent Haruf
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Meet Dad Lewis.  He's on his death bed, suffering the indignities of loss of control over his bodily functions and reminiscing about his life.  His regrets and triumphs are examined as objectively as possible.  He holds a high standard of conduct for himself, and forgives those he doesn't understand. The reader learns of his childhood and his children.

His passing is uneasy, his life unfinished, his regrets unresolved.  And yet, the reader is left with the sense of things happening as they should and life going on, relentlessly unfolding for those Dad leaves behind.

Bookworms Anonymous declared this book "a sad, feel-good story about a wonderful old man."  As always, Kent Haruf delivers a solid story line populated with compelling characters.

One caveat:  there are no quotation marks in the book!  I find this style of formatting difficult to read.  I didn't have to suffer through it, though, as I listened to the audio version from audible.com.  The lack of quotation marks was completely unnoticeable!  I had both the printed version and audio version, and after reading a couple of chapters I switched to the audio version and finished the story that way.


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