Remembering Book

I was back in Port William, Kentucky to visit with Andy Catlett today, and sadly found him not doing well. At the outset of this novel, we find that Andy has lost his right hand and is having a great deal of difficulty dealing with the loss.

...much of his thought now had to do with the comparison of times, as if he were condemned forever to measure the difference between his life when he was whole and his life now.

Our lives do so often divide between today and yesterday, before and after. In Andy's case there is a physical manifestation of this divide, but sometimes it is just a psychological or emotional one. For me, it was the loss of my mother that left me in much this same frame of mind, always comparing my life that was whole with her in it and never quite whole without her.

As he struggles, we are taken, through his memory, back to earlier days and happier times, and we watch him gather strength from the core of who he is and all the people who have contributed over time to who he is. I have grown to love Andy Catlett over the years, so his tragedy felt very real and very sad to me.

Amidst his contemplation of life, Andy, via Berry, also considers the changes that have come to the land and to farming and farmers in particular. It is a recurring and important theme with Berry, the destruction of the land and the loss of a way of life that diminishes us all.

Andy began to foresee a time when everything in the country would be marketable and everything marketable would be sold, when not one freestanding tree or household or man or woman would remain.

What Andy grapples with is his faith: his faith in himself, his life and his ability to find something precious still existing in what seems now like a half-life.

His life has never rested on anything he has known beforehand--none of it. He chose it before he knew it, and again afterwards. And then he failed his trust and his choice, and now has chosen again, again on trust.

If you have never read Wendell Berry before, don't start with this one. Start with Hannah Coulter or Jayber Crow. Get to know these people, so that the emotions you will feel for Andy will be developed over time and so that the references to other characters will feel like mentions of old friends. This book is copyright 2008; the first book, Nathan Coulter was copyrighted in 1960, and there is some of the best writing on the planet in between. Take a trip to Port William; I promise you that you will want to revisit time and time again.