Helpful Score: 1
I felt that this book, though slow, had beautiful language and imagery. At times I was swept up and lost in it. I loved the seamless movement from Old Jack's memory to his present life. I enjoyed the scenes from his memory and felt that was where Berry moved the story along. I seemed to loose my interest in the lives and people in the present time. I love this imagery about death and passing on: "And they have watched him, those who care about him, because they feel that he is going away from them, going into the past that now holds nearly all of him. And they yearn toward him, knowing that they will be changed when he is gone." We are always changed by our experiences with others and it is hard when we are left behind after they pass.
Jack's relationship with Ruth was so very painful. I felt that their's was a relationship of expectations; neither one being able to accept the other. "He won her with his vices, she accepted him as a sort of "mission field," and it was the great disaster of both their lives." Their whole relationship reminded me of Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. Both books made me question morality. Both men were stuck in a loveless relationship and both sought fulfillment elsewhere. There is so much pain in this choice for the all the parties involved. I did not feel that Berry was making any judgement about his character of Old Jack, he was just relaying the facts through the memories. How sad that Jack would only turn tender toward Ruth and she to him when she discovered his infidelity. "He felt the insult and the shame that he had given Ruth, and he felt it, he knew, because he cared for her, because he would be forever yearning and grieving after the loss of what perhaps they never could have." Even his struggle with his land was bleak like that in Ethan Frome. The setting of the barren and toil ridden land plays well against the difficult marriage.
I did love the imagery in the book and the way that Berry showed us everything through his telling of Old Jack's memory, looking back over a lifetime.
Jack's relationship with Ruth was so very painful. I felt that their's was a relationship of expectations; neither one being able to accept the other. "He won her with his vices, she accepted him as a sort of "mission field," and it was the great disaster of both their lives." Their whole relationship reminded me of Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. Both books made me question morality. Both men were stuck in a loveless relationship and both sought fulfillment elsewhere. There is so much pain in this choice for the all the parties involved. I did not feel that Berry was making any judgement about his character of Old Jack, he was just relaying the facts through the memories. How sad that Jack would only turn tender toward Ruth and she to him when she discovered his infidelity. "He felt the insult and the shame that he had given Ruth, and he felt it, he knew, because he cared for her, because he would be forever yearning and grieving after the loss of what perhaps they never could have." Even his struggle with his land was bleak like that in Ethan Frome. The setting of the barren and toil ridden land plays well against the difficult marriage.
I did love the imagery in the book and the way that Berry showed us everything through his telling of Old Jack's memory, looking back over a lifetime.
I absolutely loved this book. I originally read it because it takes place in Kentucky but reading it has made me a Wendell Berry fan. I only wish Ruth would have been nicer to Old Jack.
