The Tie That Binds, by Kent HarufI finished this book right before K. came to visit. It was a bittersweet little novel, about a topic close to my heart. It was about two generations of farming families in central Colorado. It begins by following a pair of newlyweds as they move from Iowa to their new homestead on the plains during the first few decades of the 20th century. Then it takes up the lives of their children and their neighbor's children and the ways that farm life in the 20th century can be so much different than city life.
At first I didn't like this book. I find the way that Haruf writes rather stilted, but soon I realized that the narrator (one of the neighbor kids) just talks that way and the prose soon settled into a natural rhythm as the story went along. The soul of this book deals with the disjunction between contemporary life and living life on a farm in the middle of a tiny Colorado town. It's not a happy book, but it's a very powerful one that I would heartily recommend. 4/5: Really Enjoyable
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