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Hannah Coulter, the penultimate novel in Wendell Berry's Port Williams series, offers a touching first-person account of its title character's life from her childhood to WWII’s aftermath to the turn of the century. So while it was published 45 years after his first novel Nathan Coulter (my review is here) from a narrative chronological aspect Hannah spans the life of Berry’s Port Williams corpus and reflects the maturity of an American literary master in ways his earliest novels might not. It’s a deep narrative, full of sorrow and triumph, heartache and love, pain and healing–stretching across the human experience while also recounting the decline of the American farming sector’s way of life.
This is a novel that would be hard to teach to a group of young college students but reading it as a husband and father at the midpoint of his life feels like a clarion call. Hannah is a considered life as she yearns for the children she raised who have left her, left their farm, their town, their community, their way of life, her life. We feel her heart ache for the grandchildren that she hopes may return and for the husbands who never will. In an interview with professor Dr. Dean Abbot on the subject and writing and fiction, Berry opined that “The only thing I try to accomplish in fiction,” he said, “is to show how people act when they love each other.”
Berry’s showmanship in this respect is on full display in Hannah’s tenderly written inner monologue as she considers love in the shadow of WWII’s death and devastation that left no town in American untouched or unscathed.
As she lives with her in-laws while her husband is missing in action during WWII.
"Love held us, kindness held us. We were suffering what in- were living by... I began to know my story then... it was to be the story of living in the absence of the dead..."
A beautiful description of a man and woman’s love:
“When a woman and a man give themselves to each other, they have a light between them that nobody but them can see. It doesn't shine outward into time - they see only each other and what is between them."
"But to know you love somebody and to feel his desire coming over you like a warm rain and touching you everywhere is to have a kind of light."
"A man's desire is the most flattering mirror a woman ever stands before. and she wants to see herself shining in it."
Even old, your husband is the young man you remember now. Even dead he is the man you remember, not as he was but as he is-alive still in your love,"
"You can't give yourself over to love for somebody without giving yourself over to suffering. You can't give yourself to love for a soldier without giving yourself to his suffering in war. It is this body of our suffering that Christ was born into. To suffer it himself and to fill it with life so that beyond the suffering we can imagine Easter morning."
That Berry writes about farming and the land with the same depth, careful eye and soul is a testament to his passion and skill as an author.
On the Port Williams farmers
"They were men with long memories who loved farming and whose lives had been given to ideals. Good land, good grass, good animals, good crops, good work. Wheeler loved listening to them."
On the lifespan of a farm. "There comes a time in the life of a farm when it needs young people coming on full of strength and hope with the future shining before them. It begins to need work faster than the old people can supply it."
On modernity in Port Williams "It is changing and it is threatened, because the old neighborliness is gone from it now... the old harvest crews ... have been replaced by machines and migrant laborers who eat at the store... people are living as if they think they are in a movie.. They are all looking in one direction, toward a better place. And what they see is no thicker than a screen."
Berry’s writing on parenthood hit me the hardest.
On life after their children left home and the hole that makes.
"It was like falling in love, only more than that. We knew too much by then for it to be only that. It was knowing that love was what it was and life would not complete it & death would not stop it."
Nathan on learning his son Caleb isn't come back to farm:
"Nathan didn't say anything.. tears filled his eyes and overflowed and ran down. I don't think he noticed he was crying. That was as near to licked as I ever saw him. Even his death didn't come as near to beating him as that did."
Key Quotes:
Ch. 6 15:45 Father Preston's failed attempts to comfort the comfortless and "his wish to help what could only be endured." during WWII
Ch. 4 57:55 on the farmers of the area "They were men with long memories who loved farming and whose lives had been given to ideals. Good land, good grass, good animals, good crops, good work. Wheeler loved listening to them."
Ch. 7 7:00 "Love held us, kindness held us. We were suffering what in- were living by... I began to know my story then... it was to be the story of living in the absence of the dead..."
Ch. 8 2:33:55 On grief and how answering that you are doing 'fine' is an acceptable answer. "There is always some shame and fear in this I think. Shame for the terrible selfishness and loneliness of grief. And fear of the difference between your grief and anyone else... an unwillingness to act as if loss a grief & suffering are extraordinary and there is something else: an honoring of the solitude in which the grief you have to bear will be borne." 1950's Stoic approach to loss.
Ch 8 3:05:03 "When a woman and a man give themselves to each other, they have a light between them that nobody but them can see. It doesn't shine outward into time - they see only each other and what is between them."
Ch. 71 Burley's "membership". This "membership" had an economic purpose and it had an economic result but the purpose & the result were a lot more than economic... the work was freely given in exchange for work freely given.
Ch 8. On loving "But to know you love somebody and to feel his desire coming over you like a warm rain and touching you everywhere is to have a kind of light."
Ch. 17 5:30:50 Nathan on learning his son Caleb isn't come back to farm: "Nathan didn't say anything.. tears filled his eyes and overflowed and ran down. I don't think he noticed he was crying. That was as near to licked as I ever saw him. Even his death didn't come as near to beating him as that did."
Ch 17 5:45:41 On the Port Williams memory: "But the membership, Andy said, keeps the memories even of horses, mules and milk cows and dogs."
Ch 17 5:47:23 On life after their children left home and thinking of them. "It was like falling in love, only more than that. We knew too much by then for it to be only that. It was knowing that love was what it was and life would not complete it & death would not stop it."
Ch. 18 6:08:22 On infidelity of Marcus "Men don't usually leave their wives for the pleasure of solitude."
"A man's desire is the most flattering mirror a woman ever stands before. and she wants to see herself shining in it."
Ch 19 6:21:07 On the lifespan of a farm. "There comes a time in the life of a farm when it needs young people coming on full of strength and hope with the future shining before them. It begins to need work faster than the old people can supply it."
Ch. 20 6:40:17 "Even old, your husband is the young man you remember now. Even dead he is the man you remember, not as he was but as he is-alive still in your love,"
Ch. 20 6:53:35 Nathan responds to Hannah sadness/anger at his cancer prognosis. "I'm going to live right on. Dying is none of my business-dying will have to take care of itself."
Ch. 21 7:11:50 "War is hell. It is the outer darness beyond the reach of love where people who do not know one another kill one another... where nothing is allowed to be real enough to be feared."
Ch. 21 7:22:31 "You can't give yourself over to love for somebody without giving yourself over to suffering. You can't give yourself to love for a soldier without giving yourself to his suffering in war. It is this body of our suffering that Christ was
Ch. 22 7:43:48 On modernity in Port Williams "It is changing and it is threatened, because the old neighborliness is gone from it now... the old harvest crews ... have been replaced by machines and migrant laborers who eat at the store... people are living as if they think they are in a movie.. They are all looking in one direction, toward a better place. And what they see is no thicker than a screen."
- https://kruzoo.blogspot.com/2025/08/Aplaceonearth.wendellberry.portwilliams.wwii.html
- Dean Abbot. https://web.archive.org/web/20150704180338/http://www.deanabbott.com/the-memory-of-old-jack-by-wendell-berry-a-review/
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