A World Lost - Softcover

Berry, Wendell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1887178546 ISBN 13: 9781887178549

Publisher: Counterpoint, 1997

Synopsis

In this, Wendell Berry’s fifth novel and ninth work of fiction, Andy Catlett revisits his own ninth year in the summer of 1944 when his beloved uncle is shot and killed by the surly and mysterious Carp Harmon. This is his Uncle Andrew, after whom the boy is named, someone who savored “company, talk, some kind of to-do, something to laugh at.”

Years later, still possessed by the story, Andy seeks to get to the bottom of all this, to understand the two men and their lethal connection.

“Berry deftly balances Andy’s investigation into the town’s past with an equally moving realization not only of the sustaining value of memory but of the manner in which they are shaped in enduring ways by what they love . . . a sharp portrait of a town nursing its secrets over decades.” ―Kirkus Reviews

About this title

Synopsis:

Andy Catlett is nine years old when his Uncle Andrew is murdered. Still haunted by the death as an adult, Andy works to gather details of the tragedy from the fragile memories of family, neighbors, and friends. This beautiful, bittersweet novel was featured by Booklist , Library Journal , and the Louisville Courier-Journal as one of the best books of 1996. It is the summer of 1944, and nine-year-old Andy Catlett is engrossed in the wide easy countryside near Port William, Kentuckythe clear, cool water of Chathan Spring, fields full of tumblebugs and meadowlarks, and a sky so huge it seems a great gape of vision. But sadness, loss, and mystery invade Andys world on a hot July afternoon when his Uncle Andrew is murdered. No one tells the boy why his uncle and namesake was killed, and the question follows him into manhood.As the adult Andy revisits family history to gather fragments of truth about his uncle and the murder, he begins to understand the limits of fact, namely that the truth about us, though it must lie all around us every day, is mostly hidden from us, like birds nests in the woods.

About this edition

• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 1887178546
• ISBN 13: 9781887178549
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160