Fidelity: Five Stories [Paperback]

Wendell Berry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 28, 1993

"Berry richly evokes Port William's farmlands and hamlets, and his characters are fiercely individual, yet mutually protective in everything they do. . . . His sentences are exquisitely constructed, suggesting the cyclic rhythms of his agrarian world."--New York Times Book Review.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this powerful new collection, the noted poet, essayist and fiction writer returns to Port William, Ky., the fictional town introduced in The Wild Birds. Berry's narrator roams easily through the town's past 100 years, remarking early in the book that even the unknown past is present in us, its silence as persistent as a ringing in the ears. Birth, life, death and the primary institutions of family and community are the axes on which the stories turn. Their plots are as slender as fence posts: a soldier walks home at war's end; a young woman with a mild fever ponders her first years of marriage; a taciturn farmer takes his moribund father out of a hospital's intensive care unit so the old man can die with dignity. But Berry invests them with intense feeling, using the plain language of a largely oral culture, building metaphors and similes that have the clear ring of folk wisdom. His ground's-eye view of events can be chilling, as when he sums up World War II as a great tearing apart. If the stories seem somber in their emphasis on loss, the pains are clearly leavened by the comforts of community and connectedness that a small town can provide. An excellent introduction to one of America's finest prose writers.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In these five interrelated stories, Berry focuses once again on the fictional town of Port William and on characters like Andrew Catlett, the central figure of his novel The Remembering ( LJ 11/15/88). Each story dramatizes an individual crisis but also emphasizes an abiding sense of community and the simple but solid agrarian values that sustain it. In "Pray Without Ceasing," for example, these values prevail over a primitive desire for vengeance. In "Making It Home," they provide renewed strength for a soldier as he returns from the carnage of war. In "A Jonquil for Mary Penn," a young bride from a higher social class accommodates herself to these values and finds solace in them. Although the title story is sometimes melodramatic and preachy, Berry's tales are usually engaging and display a quiet but powerful dignity.
-Albert E. Wilhelm, Tennessee Technological Univ., Cookeville
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon (September 28, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679748318
• ISBN-13: 978-0679748311
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #39,888 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Honest, earthy stories, August 12, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Fidelity: Five Stories (Paperback)

These stories, especially the title story and "A Jonquil for Mary Penn," are among the finest I've ever read. They are stories of such moral integrity and beauty that I would include them among the best ever written by an American author, alongside the best by Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Linda Hogan, and Tony Earley. All are set in the fictional town of Port William, Kentucky, and all confront similar themes: death, honor, community. The story "Fidelity" is the most powerful, the story of a mountain man who, according to the most rigid interpretation of the law, kidnaps his dying father from a hospital. Although Berry is heavy-handed in getting his point across, the beauty and honesty of the story easily carried me through it. A luminous book by one of America's greatest living writers.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Made me weep, May 9, 2000

By 

GENE GERUE "Author, Find Your Ideal Country Home" (Zanoni, MO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fidelity: Five Stories (Paperback)

The title story touched me as no story has before or since. A son behaves intimately and unlawfully with his father during the days of his death. With the son we confront stupid laws and unfeeling bureaucracy and, in the end, vital community. The poignancy of the secret burial made me weep. How the son acts out his values with fidelity and grace is a story for all to learn from and be inspired. This is horror made beautiful. Berry's writing here is beyond criticism. Read this book and be renewed.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fine Writing, August 23, 2008

By 

Lisa Groen Braner (Salt Lake City, Utah) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Fidelity: Five Stories (Paperback)

Wendell Berry writes beautifully about regular people living and working in the fictional farming town of Port William. He captures their relationships, their loyalty to each other, the natural world, and their community. If you liked Berry's novel Jayber Crow, you'll appreciate these fine stories. Recommended!