Reviews

The Memory of Old Jack by Wendell Berry

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nattyrigg's review

4.0

I love this book....it reminds me of my great-grandmother.

Struggling on what to rate this one. Listened to the audiobook, which was a good call. I think I would've struggled keeping up with a printed version. (Not that it's a hard or convoluted story--it's not--but because it is the kind of story I could set down and not at all feel prompted to pick it back up to finish.) Very melancholic. Wendell's writing is beautiful. He knows how to turn a good phrase. But something about his books just aren't clicking for me.

And then I keep coming back to, "sure you're not connecting and not really enjoying the book Alicia, but it's really well written and Berry has some very interesting points to make." Which leaves me flummoxed as to how to rate this thing. Maybe I'm in the wrong mood for them? Wrong phase of life? Too much of a suburban millennial? I don't know.

Out of the three Port William novels I've read, I've liked this one the most, far and away.

lgcullens's review

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4.0

In this, Berry's third novel, the reader is involved in the sweeping remembrances of a ninety some year old farmer. His remembrances ranging from the Civil War to just past World War II are struggles with himself, his marriage, his farm, and the distorted values of American society. It also contrasts modern American agribusiness with with the ideal of a nurturing way of life, with the focus as much or more on such as on characters individual lives.

I found this book a writer's writer example in immersing the reader beyond narrative and editorializing.