Once in a great while, I read a novel that sings. A novel like Hannah Coulter. Sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, its music resonated until my heart beat with the cadence of its words. This is the seventh in Wendell Berry’s series of novels set in fictional Port William, Kentucky. The book overflows with everything that moves a novel from good to exceptional.
A setting so richly developed and unique, it is clearly and easily seen.
A family history beautifully woven in to the fabric of the real places around it.
A main character so true, flawed, and identifiable, she is a mirror of the reader’s soul.
A life so ordinary and exceptional, those who encounter it become part of it.
A Christian world view gently integrated into the foundation of the story.
The protagonist, Hannah Coulter, is a widowed woman, looking back upon her long life, telling her story. Seamlessly, Wendell Berry grows her from young farm girl to working woman, from war bride to widow and mother, from farm wife to mother again, from grandmother to widow once more. We share her joy and sorrow in passages lyrical and hope-filled, like her thoughts after the funeral of her second husband with whom she had shared life for many decades:
After she left, the house slowly filled up with silence. Nathan’s absence came into it and filled it. I suffered my hard joy, I gave my thanks, I cried my cry. And then I turned again to that other world I had taught myself to know, the world that is neither past nor to come, the present world where we are alive together and love keeps us.
Somehow this woman’s sweet story became part of me. By the end of the book I wondered why its protagonist, Hannah Coulter, and I had not become friends sooner. I was sad to say good-bye to her, but look forward to renewing our acquaintance in the other books in Wendell Berry’s Port William series: Nathan Coulter, A Place on Earth, The Memory of Old Jack, Remembering, A World Lost, Jayber Crow, That Distant Land, and Andy Catlett.
Many thanks to Wendell Berry for writing words to make heart sing. Someday, God willing, I hope to add to that eternal song.
