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Hannah Coulter

Posted by Rebecca Teti in Reviews on Tuesday, November 11, 2008 8:12 PM

Mom & I went through a period of time during my late teens when we didn’t get along too well.

It was for no good reason that I can recall. Psychologists say adolescence is parallel to the “terrible twos” psychologically speaking: in both phases of development, the child is discovering --and asserting-- that she is not her mother. And I did that with a vengeance for awhile.

I haven’t thought of this in years, but found it beautifully described in a passage from Wendell Berry’s Hannah Coulter.

My book club introduced me to this lovely novel and after I’d devoured it, I loaned it to my mom, who likewise consumed it in a single day.

Mom liked it so much in fact, she called me three times to read me passages over the phone.

“You do recall I’m the one who recommended this story to you, right?” I asked her, laughing, when it happened the third time.

“I know,” she said, “but I have to exult with someone.”

So here’s the excerpt that reminded me of my mom --and caused her to call and say, “Is this us or what?”

There was a passage of time when she and I got on each other’s nerves and were often at outs. And it wasn’t altogether her fault. I was as anxious about her as Grandmam had been about me. I knew she had sense, but I was afraid she wouldn’t use it when she needed it. Even then, I think, I knew I was spending too much time telling her things she had already figured out for herself. But I couldn’t bear not to tell her, and she couldn’t bear to hear me. Later, when she finally was grown up and we were friends again, she said that what infuriated her the most was knowing she agreed with me.

Hannah Coulter, the reflections of a woman in her late seventies sorting through the seasons of her life, is the latest in a series of novels Berry has been writing since the 1960s about the citizens of Port William, Kentucky. I’ve started at the end: Coulter is my introduction to Berry as novelist. (I think of him as an essayist.) I’m looking forward to going back and picking up the entire series.

It’s a rare thing for a male novelist to capture the interior life of a woman as well as Berry does. His reflections on marriage and family life are touching and evocative without being sentimental.

Just to entice you, too, to read this extended reflection on marriage as “a room that love builds,” here’s another moment I enjoyed. Hannah & her husband, Nathan, are working with their sons and extended family to bring in a crop before a rainstorm. Uncle Burley, who is just the best kind of uncle, prevents a father-son fight between Nathan and Mattie, respectively:

We had several loads to unload before we could quit. The day had got long, and it was going to get longer. It was hot and close, threatening rain, and we were trying to hurry. But all of a sudden Mattie dropped down out of the tiers onto the wagon and sat down.
He said, “I’ve just got to rest a minute. I gave out up there.”
He was drenched with sweat, poor old boy, and he had to be tired. But it was the wrong time to quit. Though Nathan was up in the barn where I couldn’t see his face, I could hear his silence. I wasn’t looking forward to what he was going to say.
But Burley blew a drop of sweat off the end of his nose and gave Mattie a big smile. He said, “You didn’t give out, you gave up.”
Burley had been handing the tobacco off the wagon. He was about seventy then, was soaked with sweat himself, and as tired as the rest of us, but he was smiling. He said, “You might ought to get better acquainted with Old Willie.” Old Willie was Burley’s name for willpower.
Mattie got up them and climbed back to his place. As time would tell, he was not one for such work, was no kind of farmer, but he never pulled that trick again.

That’s just one scene from a story full of episodes from “the membership,” as Berry calls it—the network of extended family and friends that make up Hannah Coulter’s community.

I pass it along for anyone hunting for a novel that celebrates marriage, family, loyalty, neighborliness, tradition and thrift.

Comments (3) | Filed under books, family, hannah coulter, rural life, wendell berry
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