While Berry is a revered writer, this was my first read of his books. I found the lack of events almost boring. The day-to-day life was interesting to read, but I didn't really identify with any of the characters to make me enjoy this book and want to read more of his works. His style is too calm and plain. While a quote or two might be useful for me to think about, the entire read was not exceptional. ( )

Hannah Coulter reminisces about her life living on a farm in rural Kentucky during the middle of the 20th century. (fiction)

I had never heard of Wendell Berry or his Port Williams series so I had no expectations about this book. He writes in a way that seems like he is summarizing a thought or action. I kept waiting for him to change the tone of it. I am not explaining this well but it was odd for me.

This quote I can totally relate to. It is timeless. Quote from Hannah - "To be the mother of a grown-up child means that you don’t have a child anymore, and that is sad. When the grown-up child leaves home, that is sadder. I wanted Margaret to go to college, but when she actually went away it broke my heart."
( )

I am making a gift to myself, a promise to read all of Wendell Berry’s novels. Hannah Coulter is my latest stop on that journey though Port William, and, as always, I am sitting after closing the book with misty eyes and a full heart.

How can one be so wise and yet so human? I felt inclined to mark every other passage, but in the end, I didn’t want to step outside the story even long enough to drag the yellow marker across the page. As is so often the case with Berry, this is not a plot driven story, so much as a tribute to life and the life of Hannah particularly. It is a tribute to the resilience of the human soul and the beauty of existence itself.

Hannah profoundly understands love--that it has a scent, an electric touch, a shape, and that it comes in as many varieties as there are people.

Love in this world doesn’t come out of thin air. It is not something thought up. Like ourselves, it grows out of the ground. It has a body and a place.

She understands the nature of resentment and forgiveness:

But I knew at the same instant that my resentment was gone, just gone. And the fear of her that was once so big in me, where was it? And who was this poor suffer who stood there with me? ‘Yes, Ivy, I know you,” I said, and I sounded kind. I didn’t understand exactly what had happened until the thought of her woke me up in the middle of the night, and I was saying to myself, “You have forgiven her.” I had. My old hatred and contempt and fear, that I had kept so carefully so long, were gone, and I was free.

And, she understands loss:

I was changed by Nathan’s death, because I had to be. Our life together here was over. It was life alone that had to go on. The strand had slackened. I had begun the half-a-life you have when you have a whole life that you can only remember.

Throughout the novel, she gives good advice to anyone who might be listening, but perhaps the most valuable advice is this:

You mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: ‘Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks.’ I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.

I know why I keep wishing to return to Port William. It is the same impulse that makes you want to go visit an old friend and rock on the porch and share some memories and laughs that only the two of you can ever share. It is the reason you take out the picture books and stare at the faces of the past, the ones that are gone forever, and think, “but they aren’t gone, they are alive in me, they cannot wholly die until I die as well.”

Some authors give you characters, Wendell Berry gives you friends. ( )

Not Berry's best novel, but still an enjoyable and thought-provoking read about life in a small community. ( )

In this seventh Berry novel, a tale is told by an old women that pulls into it the community of Port William. All in all, the story of Hannah's live (including the Great Depression, World War II, the postwar industrialization of agriculture, and the flight of youth to more lucrative urban employment) embodies major themes of Berry's fiction.

It's a superbly written tale of resilience within a community of caring people. ( )