Wow. This book is a gift. I first heard about Wendell Berry in college when we were studying nature writers and I think we read some of his poetry. But I haven't really thought of him since then, yet I am so glad I picked this up. I loved this novel. It's about a small farming community and covers the life of one woman in that community. The way people are in this book and their values feel so familiar to me, and I don't find many books like that. And although there is much about this that feels old fashioned and familiar, there's something revolutionary about it too. Made me feel the way I felt the first time I read Thoreau, reminding me to question my assumptions and to really ask myself who I am, what it is that I want for my life, and not to be afraid to march to the beat of a different drummer. I just don't find books like this everyday, something with so much wisdom. A lot of reviews I read call Wendell Berry a prophet and I can see why, having read this, he's almost in a class of his own. And, after reading a lot of post modern stuff, which sometimes seems empty, he makes me feel like there is still hope. Now more than ever I need to read books that give me hope. I have to put in some quotes from the book about married love that made me weep (literally) for their profound beauty and truth. "Watching him and watching myself in my memory now, I know again what I knew before, but now I know more than that. Now I know what we were trying to stand for, and what I believe we did stand for: the possibility that among the world's wars and sufferings two people could love each other for a long time, until death and beyond, and could make a place for each other that would be a part of their love, as their love for each other would be a way of loving their place. This love would be one of the acts of the greater love that holds and cherishes all the world.""We were looking at each other, though we could barely see. It was almost dark. But to know you love somebody, and to feel his desire falling over you like a warm rain, touching you everywhere, is to have a kind of light. When a woman and a man give themselves to each other, they have a light between them that nobody but them can see. It doesn't shine outward into time. They see only each other and what is between them.""What I was always reaching toward in him was his gentleness that had been made in him by loss and grief and suffering, a gentleness opposite to the war that he wasn't going to talk about, and never did, but that I know at least something about, having learned it since he died. The gentleness I knew in him seemed to be calling out, and it was a gentleness in me that answered. That gentleness, calling and answering, giving and taking, brought us together. It brought us into the room of love. It made our place clear around us.""The rhymes came. But you may have a long journey to travel to meet somebody in the innermost inwardness and sweetness of that room. You can't get there just by wanting to, or just because the night falls. The meeting is prepared in the long day, in the work of years, in the keeping of faith, in kindness. The room of love is another world. You go there wearing no watch, watching no clock. It is the world without end, so small that two people can hold it in their arms, and yet it is bigger than worlds on worlds, for it contains the longing of all things to be together, and to be at rest together. You come together to the day's end, weary and sore, troubled and afraid. You take it all into your arms, it goes away, and there you are where giving and taking are the same, and you live a little while entirely in a gift. The words have all been said, all permissions given, and you are free in the place that is the two of you together. What could be more heavenly than to have desire and satisfaction in the same room?"ON MEDITATION:"I sit and let the quiet come to me. It doesn't come right away. I have to quiet myself before I can hear the quiet of the place, and a car passing along the road up on the hillside or an airplane flying over makes it harder. But I listen and wait, and at last it comes. It is an old quiet, only deepened by the sound of the creek, a bird singing, or a barking squirrel. It goes back to the beginning..."
“This is my story, my giving of thanks.” Hannah Coulter recounts her journey as a farmer’s wife, from her coming of age during the Second World War to her old age in 2001. Hannah’s life is filled with death and disappointment, and she lives to see her children and grandchildren reject her way of life. But even in her disappointment and grief, she knows her life is not a failure, but rather that her life has been filled with gifts. “My thankfulness came to me on its own, like a singing from somewhere in the dark." Hannah Coulter lives in Port William, Kentucky, where she is not just “a resident” but “a member.” Members of Port William aren’t trying to “get someplace.” They think they are someplace. Hannah believes that you mustn’t want to be somebody else and you mustn’t live with expectations; however, what you must do is this: You must have hope. “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks.” She does not always feel capable of following these instructions, but she is convinced that these are the right instructions. “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.” No big happiness comes to Hannah, but happiness came in the form of simple pleasures in ordinary things of the present: babies, sunlight, breezes, animals and birds, daily work, rest, food, strands of fog in the hollows early in the morning, butterflies, and flowers. “She began to trust the world again, not to give her what she wanted, for she saw that it could not be trusted to do that, but to give her unforeseen goods and pleasures that she had not thought to want.” Hannah observes that a life without expectations is hard, but a world that so often disappoints sometimes makes us happy by surprise. After three years of mourning for her first husband (whose body was never found after the Battle of the Bulge), Hannah marries Nathan Coulter, himself a survivor of the Battle of Okinawa and a man whose brother was killed in the war. Nathan endears himself to Hannah through his quietness, his love of his farm work, and his determination. Nathan hates waste, especially a waste of words--none of which was ever employed to describe his experiences in the war other than-- “Ignorant boys killing each other.” Although he spoke not of love, love held them. Kindness held them. “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.” Hannah describes her understated and undemonstrative love with Nathan: What I was always reaching toward in him was his gentleness that had been made in him by loss and by grief and suffering…. The gentleness I knew in him seemed to be calling out, and it was a gentleness in me that answered. That gentleness, calling and answering, giving and taking, brought us together. It brought us into the room of love…. The room of love is another world…. It is the world without end, so small that two people can hold it in their arms, and yet it is bigger than worlds on worlds, for it contains the longing of all things to be together, and to be at rest together. You come together to the day’s end, weary and sore, troubled and afraid. The words have all been said, all permissions given, and you are free in the place that is the two of you together. What could be more heavenly than to have desire and satisfaction in the same room? They were each other’s gift. They lived in the present. They kept hope alive. They endured. They renounced expectations. They found contentment in the simple pleasures of life. If you want to know why in the telling of trouble and sorrow, Hannah still gives thanks, this is why.
What do You think about Hannah Coulter (2005)?
This is one of the books that stays with you after you finish reading them. I'm not good at writing reviews but I wish I could share how this book was so profoundly touching. The description of the baby, while I had a little newborn next to me, was really beautiful. "She was needed, and then there she was.one of us. at first she was enclosed in her own little being. and then we could see it happening, she began to see out of her eyes."there is also that beautiful description of the membership. and the relationship with her grand kids. I definitely want to read other books from Wendell Berry now!
—Tiphaine
Wendell Berry, perhaps more than any other author, understands the connection people have with place. Not only this, but he has captured the wisdom and grace that age provides to those willing to understand and to learn. This book is profound and prophetic in so many ways--it weaves an emotional web of beauty, happiness, life, faith, and hope. Yet Berry is not a naive optimist. He understands the pain of life and captures it as well as any of the other range of human emotions.Hannah Coulter tells her story as an old woman--with the wisdom, grace, charity, and love of a mature Christian woman. She recounts her early years in Shagbark, how her mother died while she was still a young girl and the attachment she developed with her grandmother. She moves to Hargrave shortly after graduating from high school. She begins her connection with the people of Port William here. I won't spoil any more of the story, but she becomes an integral member of the community and witnesses the decline of the family farm--indeed is a part of the decline of the family farm.Her story is as authentic, as true, as any real person you'll meet. Berry exhibits a skill for understanding people, place, authority, youth, old age, and just about anything he puts into words. The novel is simply beautiful--reverent as one other GoodReads reviewer wrote. Berry recognizes the sanctity of life--of people--all people. Each person is their own in this novel and he gives them the dignity they deserve as people made in the image of God.Hannah Coulter makes you want to be a better person--a better parent, a better spouse, a better image-bearer. Be gracious, be charitable. Love people, love your place, love your life, be content with where and what you are. This novel is out of step with modernity--Berry in fact rejects modernity and its impersonal disconnection from family, place, and neighbor. You'll yearn for what has been lost, and hope for what might be restored.
—John
It's beautiful. Berry reminds us that we are constituted by our loves, and that we find peace as we love, and that to love is to be altogether given--to another, to a place, to a people. But more important, he reminds us that we are to love what is before us: "Nathan said, 'Don't complain about the chance you had,' in the same way exactly that he used to tell the boys, 'Don't cuss the weather.' . . . you mustn't wish for another life. You mustn't want to be somebody else." Against this is the call to a "better life" and the promise of "fulfillment" and "freedom" in a "better place." But there is no better life and no better place. Fulfillment and freedom are right here, available within the possibility that one can love another. And there is no better place: We are what is before us. We are our loves. And so, if we are wise and live wisely, this will be said of us: "They aren't going any place, they aren't getting ready to become anything but what they are, and so their lives are not fretful and hankering. And they are all still here."I love it.To entice you:"Now I know what we were trying to stand for, and what I believe we did stand for: the possibility that among the world's wars and sufferings two people could love each other for a long time, until death and beyond, and could make a place for each other that would be a part of their love, as their love for each other would be a way of loving their place. This love would be one of the acts of the greater love that holds and cherishes all the world." (67-68.)"And he was a rock to me, but now I knew that he had been shaken. . . . and he was shaken for life, and deep in the night he needed to touch me. I didn't know the reason then, but now I know that some old nightmare of the war had come back to him and frightened him awake. And ever so quietly, ever so gently, so as not to wake me, he would touch me. I would pretend to sleep on, so as not to disturb him wiht the thought that he had wakened me. It was not a lover's touch. As I knew partly then but know completely now, he needed to know that he was here and I was here with him, that he had come from the world of war, again, to this. Reassured, he would sleep again, and I too would sleep." (173.)"I am watching him, but he has not yet seen me. And now he sees me. The expression on his face does not change, but now his intention has changed, he is walking toward me and nothing else. As he comes closer he smiles a little, still whistling. I know that when he comes to where I am he will give me a hug, and I want him to. I know how it is going to feel, the entire touch of him. He looks at me with a look I know. The shiver of the altogether given passes over me from head to foot." (186.)
—Timothy Butler
