Recently Read Books: Hannah Coulter

Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry

I bought this book because a reader with great taste (check out her blog at  www.thoroughlyalive.com) absolutely loved it. She said someone had given it to her to read with these words: "Read it slowly. It's too precious." I had tried Wendell Berry before and was skeptical of this high praise, but I started to read. I must say, I did not read it slowly: I started in the late morning and finished by suppertime. And then I laid my head down on my couch pillow and cried. I have not been so deeply "moved" (the word my students would choose :-) by a book in a long time. This book was beautiful, and indeed "precious." The beauty of the story is difficult to explain, since it is merely Hannah Coulter telling her unremarkable life story of growing up and living and farming outside of a small Kentucky town near the Ohio River. And yet, to read this story is to enter into the mystery of the human experience in its beauty, sorrow, questions, sweat, joy, and sense of belonging. The two main themes that achingly stirred my soul were:

     1) Hannah's sense of belonging, her sense of "home" in this community as well her sense of belonging in the beauty of the fields and the woods
     2) The intangible oneness, stitched-together-in-soul-ness that formed the bedrock of this couple's life which was full of hard work and constant wrestling with the land

A brilliant author is one who can write unremarkable stories of normal humanity in a way that somehow connects the reader with the preciousness of life under all it's daily struggle. Reading this book is like drinking a long, cold drink from a good, deep well on a hot summer's day. A drink that goes straight to your soul.