Grant Person is a curious character. When we first meet this protagonist, he is leaving his Montana sheep ranching family for somewhere (anywhere?) else. His whole attitude is one of ambivalence. If the train stops he'll get on board. If not, oh well. He'll go back to his parents and brother as if nothing happened. He has no clear direction other than he would head due east towards New York. He ends up in Atlantic City, New Jersey for some time then wanders home again when he learns his mother has died.
When Grant returns, he is the exact opposite. He comes home to a sheep ranch barely surviving. After his mother's death, his father runs away. His brother with dreams of being an artist has one foot out the door himself. By himself, Grant becomes singular in his focus to save the farm. It's a stark story with barely any color or light. ( )

This novel is quiet yet passionate. I enjoyed spending time with Grant, a man who is sensitive, ethical, and impactful. His story provoked me, and also left me saddened. I will not forget this character. I listened to the Library of Congress audiobook version, narrated by Michael Kramer...the absolute cream of the crop when it comes to telling a story. I've said this before, but it bears repeating...I will listen to ANYTHING narrated by Mr. Kramer, my favorite narrator since 1996. In fact, I picked this book up because he was doing the job!! ( )

This is the story of a young man who leaves his family's backwater ranch and tragic past to start properly living life, only to find himself coming full circle and returning to his bleak and barren homeland where nothing will ever be the same again.

The first quarter of this book I really struggled with. I am all for prose over plot, and the writing was beautiful in places, but it was dull as ditchwater, with the main protagonist meeting too many irrelevant people. The story seemed to be going nowhere, I couldn't connect with the main character, and if I wasn't limited to the small stack of books I'd taken on holiday with me I'd probably have given up.

BUT... I'm glad I didn't. The part that I struggled with was Lennon describing Grant's travels away from the family sheep ranch, but once the character returned to the homestead the story became beautiful, evocative and heart-wrenching. I understand why Lennon needed Grant to go on his journey for the rest of the story to make sense, but it's a shame it resulted in such a poor start to the novel.

I ended up really enjoying this book. The characters on the ranch were fantastically executed, the western setting was enthralling, and the plot had me gripped. I've been interested in this author for a while, and look forward to reading some more of his work.

This could easily have been 4 stars +, but the very slow start let it down. 3.5 stars, but one to recommend nonetheless. ( )

ON THE NIGHT PLAIN contains perhaps some of the most bleakly beautiful prose I have read in many years. The writing is precise. Not a single wasted word. Others have compared it to EAST OF EDEN. But to tell the truth I never was able to get all the way through Steinbeck's book. Not so here. J. Robert Lennon's novel captivated me from page one and kept me that way to the very end. The bitter end, maybe I should say, but I don't want to give anything away.

Grant and Max Person are a pair of brothers I will not soon forget. There is indeed, I suppose, a kind of Cain-and-Abel tension between them, hence the Steinbeck comparison. But the absent parents and other brothers also loom large in their story, shadow characters, you might call them, who have exacted a profound influence on Max and Grant. And of course there is Sophia, rudely displaced from her affluent New York city upbringing, "face fearful and unbeautiful," the proverbial bone of contention between the brothers. But perhaps another equally important character here is the setting - the bleak, unforgiving western landscape with its glacier-scraped ravines and coulees and rugged foothills and mountains.

ON THE NIGHT PLAIN is a novel of the modern west that takes you from the days of WWII right up to the present day. It is a story of a family that struggled valiantly against the elements, against fate itself. It is also a love story that will absolutely break your heart. I loved this book. ( )

I was snared from the opening page. Lennon's novel, set largely on a sheep farm on the Great Plains just after World War II, is about loneliness -- its burdens and anguish as well as its dignity and allure. It is about honor and responsibility -- qualities which seem in some ways, rather archaic these days. Grant Person (Lennon has chosen the name, I suspect, with Dickensian car), the protagonist, is portrayed as a the sort of man one rarely encounters in modern times, meaning he is comfortable with silence, with vast unpeople spaces, and with hardship. He neither explains nor analyses himself; the reader gets the impression that, were he to be exposed to the sort of fame-seeking, self-revealing obsessions of the present day, he would shake his head in distaste, chuckle, and head for the hills. For Grant Person, what you do, how you shoulder your life and do the next-right-thing is the measure of your character.

This may be a quiet novel, but nonetheless, there is enough tension and desire to keep this reader up late at night. There is family intrigue, and passion galore. In fact, the plot is nearly Shakespearean -- betrayal and assumed identities and ghosts and the heartbreaking rivalry between brothers.

The prose is spare -- there is something of Cormac McCarthy here, not only in the bare-bones, although poetic, language, but also in the depiction of a lost world. However, whereas McCarthy's work is often pessimistic and bloody, Lennon's novel, while often bleak, is imbued with a kind of cleanliness and calm. In this, and the profound compassion on every page, I am reminded of Kent Haruf's "Plainsong" and "Eventide," books I admire enormously.

Lennon is able to cram so much into this novel, and it is so thick with symbolism and emotion, it's surprising to realize it's only 246 pages long. Bravo. ( )