Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry

Jayber Crow is the story of a barber in the town of Port William who falls in love with another man’s wife. …Doesn’t that sound awful? One of those miserable novels you find in the Adult Fiction section in the library where despair is passed off as maturity and happy endings are for those too young to know better.

This is not one of those books. No, no, no. Because, see, Wendell Berry understands the possibilities of redemption. Not just the macro-redemption of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice, but how that astounding love of God can trickle down into the mundane moments of life and turn even our darkest moments into things of glory.

I’m having a terrible time figuring out how to summarize Jayber’s story, because we live in a world where the definition of love means getting what you want. That causes huge misunderstandings when I try to briefly state Jayber’s solution to his problem. The short summary is that Jayber chooses love—but it’s not the grasping, desperate selfishness that passes for love in the world.

At the moment of Jayber’s choice to love, he says “I began to pray again. I took it up again exactly where I had left off twenty years before, in doubt and hesitation, bewildered and unknowing what to say. “Thy will be done,’ I said, and seemed to feel my own bones tremble in the grave.” Love, in Jayber Crow is not about getting what you want. It’s about how obedience opens you up to something far greater and more wonderful than you ever imagined wanting.

Now I’m going to severely curtail myself there and stop. I’ve tried to just give you a glimpse of the heart of the novel, but it’s one of those books where each word matters, and I’d hate to trim any of the beauty away with a hasty summary.

I’ve also read this book three times in the past year and I’m aware of my own inclination to turn this brief review into a several-thousand word ramble! But that would bore everyone and then you wouldn’t want to read the book. Believe me, I could go on and on about the imagery of the river, and his friendship with Burley, and how Jayber introduces you with such love and tenderness to all the wonderful folks of Port William, and Athey Keith’s wisdom, and all Jayber’s little insightful lines that are basically gut-punchers and make you think about how you treat the people around you, and his little shack on the river…Ahem. So yeah. Stopping now.