Title: Wonderful First Novel
Product review: Something unusual happened when I was about half way through `The Ties That Bind'...I misplaced my copy of the book. A couple of months later, when I found it again and resumed reading it, I was amazed to find that it was as though I'd never been away from Haruf's wonderful creation.Like many people, I had read Haruf's most recent work, `Plainsong', been utterly captivated and immediately ordered his previous novels. While `The Ties That Bind' does not have the same depth of skill as `Plainsong' the gap between the two novels is slight. Haruf's tale of Sanders Roscoe and his neighbor Edith Goodnough and her demanding family is spare and haunting. Haruf's characters are so real, so genuine and alive that the reader can't help but develop an empathy for them that is rare in fiction today. Although lacking the depth and finesse of `Plainsong', `The Ties That Bind' is a wonderful first novel.
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