Book Review: Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry

If you’re looking for a novel that captures a sense of true community – and contentedness in a way of life – but without sentimentality, utopianism, or undue reserve, Hannah Coulter may fit the bill.

Set in the fictitious farming community of Port William, a small town in Kentucky, from 1940, through the Second World War, to the turn of the 21st Century, the novel revolves around the loves and losses of Hannah Coulter from her youth to her late seventies. As the narrator, she tells the story of her family and romantic life through the post-War decades as farming and much else in American society changes around her.

Initially, not having read any of his other books, I didn’t realise that Wendell Berry, the author, is male.

If you’re reading this, you’ll almost certainly know that (a) I also have a Y chromosome and (b) I’m attempting to write an historical fiction novel. But the realisation that a ‘he’ was writing from a female perspective – and doing so so convincingly, was definitely one of those ‘tipping my hat’ moments to an author who knows exactly what he doing – a master of his craft.

(If you read Hannah Coulter, you’ll reach page 71, ‘We were looking at each other…’. You may think differently but surely this is an authentic woman’s voice?)

Wendell Berry is drawn into imagining Hannah’s thoughts as an older woman and catches her reminiscing, putting her thoughts into words. For example, when thinking about the shared mentality of the farming community around Port William she says:

‘Members of Port William aren’t trying to “get someplace”.

They think they are someplace.’

In two small sentences, Wendell Berry’s message: that it’s people, not what people are doing and achieving, that have true value, comes to the surface.

The cast includes Hannah Coulter (née Steadman), Virgil Feltner, Nathan Coulter, Danny Branch, Will Branch, and Wheeler Catlett

186 Pages, Counterpoint