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The Beautiful Ordinary

ByKelly Keller

This summer I’m spending some time with the titles for parents…that you won’t find in the Parenting section. You can see the full list in our Mended Wood Home Library Guide.

We’ve covered plenty of nonfiction picks this summer, but this week we’re turning to fiction. Hannah Coulter is Wendell Berry’s seventh novel and part of his Port William series. It was first published in 2004. When fans discuss the works of Wendell Berry, this book often features near the top of their lists of favorite fiction; the other top choice is usually Jayber Crow, about the bachelor barber of Port William.

Hannah Coulter tells the story of one woman’s life, from the time of her childhood, to her marriage and childrearing years, to later life. She encounters the typical change of family and community alongside the rapid change that happened in farming communities over the course of the twentieth century.

Hannah is a faithful friend, wife, mother, and member of the community. She is honest about her own struggles, failings, and fears. Indeed, this narrative is so realistic that at first I had a hard time believing it was written by a man. (To his credit, Berry often says that he consulted often with his wife on this draft.)

Hannah lives a small life, played out on the tiny stage of her Kentucky community. Yet the scope and span of this novel leaves you with the feeling of the great significance of an ordinary life. I have read this book at least four times, either as an individual or in groups, and each time, at each phase of my life, it has met me differently.

That’s all I’m going to say about this one! I’m just going to leave you with some of Berry’s amazing prose:

“The chance you had is the life you’ve got. You can make complaints about what people, including you, make of their lives after they have got them, and about what people make of other people’s lives, even about your children being gone, but you mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: ‘Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks.’ I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.”

“And so you have a life that you are living only now, now and now and now, gone before you can speak of it, and you must be thankful for living day by day, moment by moment, in this presence. But you have a life too that you remember. It stays with you. You have lived a life in the breath and pulse and living light of the present, and your memories of it, remembered now, are of a different life in a different world and time. When you remember the past, you are not remembering it as it was. You are remembering it as it is. It is a vision or a dream, present with you in the present, alive with you in the only time you are alive.”

Kelly Keller
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