“I picked up an audio version of The Memory of Old Jack for two reasons. First, Berry came highly recommended by Wallace Stegner, an author I very much admire. Second, Berry is scheduled to speak at the Wisconsin Book Festival in the fall,and I wanted to have read some of his fiction before hearing him speak.
The story unfolds slowly, no fast action here. Jack Beechum is the main character, an old farmer, whose life remembered makes up the book. The story takes place on the last day of Jack's life in 1952, and it encompasses not only the important events and family in Jack's life, but of the peripheral people who know him: his barber, his landlady, his lawyer. Jack isn't perfect, but I couldn't help but come to admire him over the course of the novel. The author, besides writing beautifully and perceptively about characters, also has a love and respect for small towns and the rural landscape, and this, as much as the depiction of people, is what made me enjoy the book most.
”
sthurner wrote this review Wednesday, July 1 2009.
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