Only 3-Word Review on video:

“This is the difference, then, between books which set their sites only upon relating the events of characters–no matter how tragic or complex or realistic–and those who see that the discoveries from such experiences benefit character and reader alike. “

I’ve heard so much positive about this work that I was worried in the first 1/3 or so, since it read like a mere fictional memoir of rural curiosity. I wasn’t sure what I was to take from it. This was paid off in large ways as Berry allows his narrator more moments to reflect upon circumstances, even to find a philosophy for memory and for living. By the last 1/3, I could not set it down.

And this is the difference, then, between books which set their sites only upon relating the events of characters–no matter how tragic or complex or realistic–and those who see that the discoveries from such experiences benefit character and reader alike. I might never share the final understandings which Hannah Coulter comes to realize, but Berry offers through her questions on the changes in our communities, in the inevitability of some kinds of change, and what expectations are perhaps only painful to hold. This may well be a work I will return to; it certainly is a community I will visit again.