Books like Remembering

Over the years, Port William, a close-knit farming community in Kentucky, has become my favorite place to revisit in literary fiction. Remembering is the story of Andy Catlett, who was just a youth when I last met him in The Memory of Old Jack. In 1952, Andy was leaving for college, torn between his devotion to the farm and the lure of city life that promised a future denied his forbears who tilled the land. I wanted to know what became of Andy and the story I read made me ache for him as I would a kin.Instead of Port William, Remembering is set in San Francisco where Andy, now an agricultural journalist, is attending a farming conference. I grieved when I learned that Andy has lost his right hand in a farming accident and along with it, his self-worth. The trauma of losing a hand has left him angry and bitter, and estranged him from his wife, children, and himself. It was heartbreaking to step into the dark abyss of his depression. The loss of a body part understandably violates the physical and psychological integrity of a person and threatens his or her sense of identity.The story unfolds in the realms of Andy’s thought life and the introspection is emotionally draining on the reader. In Andy’s disdain for the professors of agriculture at the conference who extolled the wonders of monstrous machinery but had never farmed a day in their lives, one sensed Berry’s indignation at the encroachment of modern technology and its threat to the sustainability of small family farms. Remembering takes place over a day in 1976 as Andy wrestles with his distant self. He remembers with gratitude the families in Port William (e.g., the Feltners, Coulters, Rowanberrys) that have significantly shaped his values and beliefs. ‘On the verge of his journey, he is thinking about choice and chance, about the disappearance of chance into choice, though the choice be as blind as chance. That he is who he is and no one else is the result of a long choosing, chosen and chosen again.’ For Andy, it is a gift to claim and reclaim membership in the fellowship of Port William stalwarts. He slowly finds his way home to Port William and to himself.As always, Berry’s poetic prose shines. There is no plot and not much of a story. However, into the darkness of Andy’s agony, Berry’s ineffable writing brings light and healing, the comfort that readers have come to expect from having been at Port William.