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A review by rivercrow
A World Lost by Wendell Berry
4.0
Yet another brilliant Wendell Berry novel. I will be reading many more.
I have said this before, but Berry does not employ literary pyrotechnics, he does not need them. His style is graceful, lovely, filled with hope and yet infused with a melancholy that is realistic and sometimes even heartbreaking. His characters are among the richest I have ever read. They are people you wish you knew, but knowing that they exist in his pages is enough to comfort you that they could truly exist in this world.
I began reading this while sitting on a hidden little dock in the middle of a local nature reserve. My son was happily visiting his cousins, my daughter was at the reserve attending a nature class, and I had just finished running the trails for 75 minutes. I was exceedingly happy, but still jacked up from my run (turtles can get runner's high apparently). I sat on the dock looking out at one of the beautiful lakelets and the surrounding marshes. I remember feeling that being on that dock was the perfect metaphor for my love of Berry's writing. I was in this reserve which you would not know was even there from the interstate that passes by it. I was taken from the craziness of the world and let down from my running adrenaline simply by entering A World Lost and allowing Berry to provide me a peaceful spot. The view I had of my world at the moment was of an idyllic scene and yet the wind was blowing cattails across the water in a manner that imbued the setting with just a tinge of sadness--hard to explain. I had the same experience in the book; lovely and graceful writing, but all within the context of a death of a beloved uncle and a world lost to Andy Catlett.
"I have been here a fair amount of time, and slowly I have learned that my true home is not just this place but is also that company of immortals with whom I have lived here day by day. I live in their love, and I know something of the cost. Sometimes in the darkness of my own shadow I know that I could not see at all were it not for this old injury of love and grief, this little flickering lamp that I have watched beside for all these years."
I have said this before, but Berry does not employ literary pyrotechnics, he does not need them. His style is graceful, lovely, filled with hope and yet infused with a melancholy that is realistic and sometimes even heartbreaking. His characters are among the richest I have ever read. They are people you wish you knew, but knowing that they exist in his pages is enough to comfort you that they could truly exist in this world.
I began reading this while sitting on a hidden little dock in the middle of a local nature reserve. My son was happily visiting his cousins, my daughter was at the reserve attending a nature class, and I had just finished running the trails for 75 minutes. I was exceedingly happy, but still jacked up from my run (turtles can get runner's high apparently). I sat on the dock looking out at one of the beautiful lakelets and the surrounding marshes. I remember feeling that being on that dock was the perfect metaphor for my love of Berry's writing. I was in this reserve which you would not know was even there from the interstate that passes by it. I was taken from the craziness of the world and let down from my running adrenaline simply by entering A World Lost and allowing Berry to provide me a peaceful spot. The view I had of my world at the moment was of an idyllic scene and yet the wind was blowing cattails across the water in a manner that imbued the setting with just a tinge of sadness--hard to explain. I had the same experience in the book; lovely and graceful writing, but all within the context of a death of a beloved uncle and a world lost to Andy Catlett.
"I have been here a fair amount of time, and slowly I have learned that my true home is not just this place but is also that company of immortals with whom I have lived here day by day. I live in their love, and I know something of the cost. Sometimes in the darkness of my own shadow I know that I could not see at all were it not for this old injury of love and grief, this little flickering lamp that I have watched beside for all these years."