Jayber Crow

by Wendell Berry
Category: "Fiction - Historical"
Pages:363
Year of Publication:2000
Date Added:07/15/2014
Date Read:03/04/2016
Notes:Subtitle: The Life Story of Jayber Crow, Barber, of the Port William Membership, as Written by Himself

Jayber was orphaned as a boy, raised for a while by elderly neighbors on their farm along the Kentucky River, and then, when they died, sent to an orphanage. When he was old enough, he took off wandering and ended up back in the valley. For 30+ years he owned the town barber shop and lived upstairs. He had an "arrangement" with a waitress in a nearby town, but then decided to give that up and dedicate his life to being faithful to the woman he loved, Mattie Chatham, who was married to an ambitious farmer. He never told Mattie how he felt, just loving her from a distance. After he shut down the barber shop, he lived in a small cabin on the river. Occasionally, he would meet Mattie in the woods and they would enjoy each others' company without talking much, or touching. When she was on her deathbed, he went to see her and, without coming out and saying it, told her how he felt and she said she did too.
My Rating: 6

Reviews for Jayber Crow

Review - Jayber Crow

Well-written. Incredibly so in places. But Jayber was sort of a cipher — just living day to day. His theology, while based in part on truth, was confused. For example, he thought that faith was believing that everyone ends up in heaven eventually. A lot of it was his assumptions of what God must be and think. The descriptions of small-town life were fun — the ramblings into philosophy and bad theology, not so much. His determination to live his life in faithfulness to another man's wife was just wrong and pointless.

Reviewed by Roger on 2016-03-04 11:04:36

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