Yet another brilliant Wendell Berry novel. I will be reading many more.I have said this before, but Berry does not employ literary pyrotechnics, He does not need them. His style is graceful, lovely, filled with hope and yet infused with a melancholy that is realistic and sometimes even heartbreaking. His characters are among the richest I have ever read. They are people you wish you knew, but knowing that they exist in his pages is enough to comfort you that they could truly exist in this world.I began reading this while sitting on a hidden little dock in the middle of a local nature reserve. My son was happily visiting his cousins, my daughter was at the reserve attending a nature class, and I had just finished running the trails for 75 minutes. I was exceedingly happy, but still jacked up from my run (turtles can get runner's high apparently). I sat on the dock looking out at one of the beautiful lakelets and the surrounding marshes. I remember feeling that being on that dock was the perfect metaphor for my love of Berry's writing. I was in this reserve which you would not know was even there from the interstate that passes by it. I was taken from the craziness of the world and let down from my running adrenaline simply by entering A World Lost and allowing Berry to provide me a peaceful spot. The view I had of my world at the moment was of an idyllic scene and yet the wind was blowing cattails and across the water in a manner that imbued the setting with just a tinge of sadness--hard to explain. I had the same experience in the book; lovely and graceful writing, but all within the context of a death of a beloved uncle and a world lost to Andy Catlett."I have been here a fair amount of time, and slowly I have learned that my true home is not just this place but is also that company of immortals with whom I have lived here day by day. I live in their love, and I know something of the cost. Sometimes in the darkness of my own shadow I know that I could not see at all were it not for this old injury of love and grief, this little flickering lamp that I have watched beside for all these years."
Remembering for me, was first of the novels, followed by A World Lost simply because of choice. Andy Catlett is the protagonist in both which proved most helpful. It helped to string together this boy becoming man and facing tragedy. His approaching adulthood seemed to be equally powerful in both books. It was such a relief reading into his old age with both the murder and the tragic lost of his right hand to know that he was living with the quote from the flyleaf, "The dead rise and walk about the 'timeless' fields of thought". All the while quietly absorbing the experiences of Andy as a boy loving his Uncle more as life continued to unfold even after the murder, I was wishing our teenagers could read of this life and appreciate it. We, who grew up on the American farm identify immediately whether it be Kentucky, Iowa or even California. It was such a pleasure to have the heritage to follow in the final pages to place each family member. The regard Andy held toward his grandparents, and friends and most of all his own parents helps to see a world of love. It is a constant remember of families joining forces t difficult times. The world lost would indicate these people shall be no more; they are more than alive on these pages, they are immortal. Wendell Berry's novels will continue to occupy my thoughts for many days to come. His essays in The Art of the Commonplace were treasures a few years ago. He truly is a great American.A beautiful quote; "Whatever he was, Uncle Andrew was more than I know. In drawing him toward me again after so long a time, I seem to have summoned, not into view or into thought, but just within the outmost reach of love. Uncle Andrew in the plentitude of his being--the man he would have been for my sake, and for love of us all, had he been capable. In recalling him as I knew him in mortal time, I have felt his presence as a living soul."
As the title suggests, A World Lost is a story of life come and gone, told with the reminiscent, soothing voice of a man reflecting on his childhood in the farmlands of Kentucky. The lovely style, though, is also what prevented me from connecting deeply with the book. It's as if a soft, forlorn vignette is dropped over the entire scene adding warmth and welcoming, but, I think, at the cost of sharpness and any sense of dramatic immediacy. Even the tragic and mysterious death of Uncle Andrew feels long ago and far away, seen through a cloud of time that softens the impact of his death. I walked away from this book with a feeling of regretful detachment, as if I'd just walked away from a long story told by someone elderly, charming, but not quite aware of my presence. Berry's character's eyes glass over as he stares off into a shroud of memories, returning to meaningful and important stories that are nevertheless far more real to him than they could ever be to me. And I'm sorry for that.
—Logan
A young boy comes to terms with the murder of his uncle. This is such a good and sad book. It sort of slowly examines all of the losses that are suffered in a small community when someone leaves. It is full of subtle changes and daily grief. It is just a really excellent story of the totality of loss. Wendell Berry. A note about Wendell Berry. His books are very much character oriented. It is sort of rare that things happen in his books. He deals more with description and condition and the internal worlds and minds that inhabit the community he has created. It's something to consider when taking on his novels. They aren't exactly light reading, delightful as I think they are.
—Kim
I do love Wendell Berry. Simple, eloquent, quiet, measured, wise. He's very good at understanding human nature and his mind is original. There is no one else like him. "I learned that all human stories in this world contain many lost or unwritten or unreadable or unwritable pages and that the truth about us, though it must exist though it must lie all around us everyday, is mostly hidden from us, like birds' nests in the woods.""In that time of grief and discouragement and defeat--it comes clear to me now--all that my father was and would ever be depended on my mother. I can see how near he came to turning loose all that he held together and how in holding it together, with my mother's help, he preserved the possibility of our life here; he quieted himself, lived, stayed on, bore what he had to bear. With my mother's help, he kept alive in his life our lives as they would be." As I type that I think of how few American novels seem to celebrate people who stay rooted, who with patience bear grief or loss or simply the mundane. It seems that we believe in change and movement and adventure and we don't want to 'settle'. It isn't the American way. And yet, there are these many many lives, quiet lives, lives of patience, lives of work, people who stay the course and who take care of the little place they have been given, and they take care of the people they have been given. I like that Berry honors them and that way of life. I like to read about them." Standing there in the brilliance with my ears sticking out under the brim of my straw hat and my mouth probably hanging open, I saw how beautiful the field was, how beautiful our work was. And it came to me all in a feeling how everything fitted together, the place and ourselves and the animals and the tools, and how the sky held us. I saw how sweetly we were enabled by the land. . . "
—Callie
