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A review by book_beat
A World Lost by Wendell Berry
5.0
Wendell Berry’s 1996 novel, A WORLD LOST, opens with Andy Catlett looking back at 1944: the summer he turned ten and the summer his uncle was murdered. As a narrator, Andy meanders in and out of memories about that season, his uncle, his father, the murder, and his childhood. A narrative arch doesn’t exist, almost, and yet the reader is fully invested and can follow Andy’s trail of thought. Andy’s hazy sense of memories about his uncle and his recalling of some seemingly random, yet very vivid, details feels accurate of a narrator recalling his childhood. His caution to bring up these broken and gap-filled memories until most of the memory-bearers are passed, also holds truth.
Before reading this novel, I was experiencing a major book slump. Nothing holds my attention and admiration. But what Wendell does with his stories is gather the pieces of me: the myths cultivated by my uncles, the unique speech of my grandpa, the funny way my dad gets ready for the day; he gathers them and binds them in a narrative that breathes hope back into my ordinary moments. When my world feels lost, Wendell says that these immortal souls have beat a rhythm into my everyday life that gives lyric and melody and sound to my days.
The final chapter, at only two-pages, took me nearly fifteen minutes to read as I underlined every other sentence and sobbed into my shirt. When you finish a book with a vision of Heaven, it will linger with me long after I close the cover.
“That light can come into this world only as love, and love can enter only by suffering. Not enough light has ever reached us here among the shadows, and yet I think it has never been entirely absent... 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.”
Before reading this novel, I was experiencing a major book slump. Nothing holds my attention and admiration. But what Wendell does with his stories is gather the pieces of me: the myths cultivated by my uncles, the unique speech of my grandpa, the funny way my dad gets ready for the day; he gathers them and binds them in a narrative that breathes hope back into my ordinary moments. When my world feels lost, Wendell says that these immortal souls have beat a rhythm into my everyday life that gives lyric and melody and sound to my days.
The final chapter, at only two-pages, took me nearly fifteen minutes to read as I underlined every other sentence and sobbed into my shirt. When you finish a book with a vision of Heaven, it will linger with me long after I close the cover.
“That light can come into this world only as love, and love can enter only by suffering. Not enough light has ever reached us here among the shadows, and yet I think it has never been entirely absent... 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.”