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Gilead

by Marilynne Robinson

3.72 · rating details · 17,675 ratings · 3,164 reviews

Twenty-four years after her first novel, Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson returns with an intimate tale of three generations from the Civil War to the twentieth century: a story about fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America's heart. Writing in the tradition of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Marilynne Robinson's beautiful, spare, and spiritu...more

Paperback, 247 pages

Published January 10th 2006 by Picador (first published 2004)

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Jan 06, 2009

brian rated it

Recommended to brian by: DFJ

paul schrader called his book on the films of bresson, ozu, and dreyer transcendental style in film. sorry, mr. schrader, for reducing your book and theory to a one-liner, but the transcendental style goes something like this: the intentional evenness and flatness (both visually and dramatically) of these films work to create a ‘lifting’ or revelation at the end, such as one may receive after hours of intense prayer, study, or meditation.

as much as a book can fit within this cate...morepaul schrader called his book on the films of bresson, ozu, and dreyer transcendental style in film. sorry, mr. schrader, for reducing your book and theory to a one-liner, but the transcendental style goes something like this: the intentional evenness and flatness (both visually and dramatically) of these films work to create a ‘lifting’ or revelation at the end, such as one may receive after hours of intense prayer, study, or meditation.

as much as a book can fit within this category, i think Gilead does. traditional narrative is replaced by the writings of one John Ames, a dying 77 yr old congregationalist minister – writings intended for his young son to read when he becomes of age in the form of warnings, anecdotes, memories, lessons, and personal thoughts mostly on god, existence, belief, morality, and family. (don't worry, it's not nearly as heavy as it sounds. the tone is actually mellow and melancholy and conversational)

i have the same problems that other atheists/agnostics/skeptics have with religion and its adherents, but, unlike many of them, i see no inherent problem in belief without proof. in fact, i see something beautiful, almost, in deeply held religious belief. a confession: remember when that tom cruise scientology video was leaked a while back? the one in which he was universally ridiculed and parodied by all non-scientologists? well, a part of me was envious of him. envious of the focus and intensity and aggression and passion he felt for this thing that seems so wildly ridiculous to me. belief is something we all crave. we crave it so bad it hurts. and it makes us crazy. it turns us into self-righteous assholes or hateful fundamentalist evangelicals or bitter fundamental atheists or suicide bombers or pacifists etc…

but i can’t believe. not in that sense anyway. i’m just not built that way. i’m scared shitless of an indifferent universe and a lack of absolute morality and the certainty that i will die and that every single person i know and love will die and that all of us, me and you and martin luther king and hitler, every one of us are just slabs of meat in a casket after we’re gone. but even that can’t make me believe without proof. and i waver between priding myself on adhering to the sad noble truth rather than the feel-good lie and between desperately wishing i could lighten the horrible burden of existence with the belief that we're all part of something larger than any of us can even fathom.

and Gilead offers the best understanding i’ve ever read concerning all of this stuff from the POV of one who holds a deep, unwavering belief in god and prescribed morality. totally unexpected from a contemporary author in the days of falwell, robertson, warren vs. hitchens, dennet, dawkins. Gilead is a gift for the lover of literature and for the religious person and perhaps, more than anyone, for the open minded skeptic.

John Ames writes:

I have always wondered what relationship this present reality bears to an ultimate reality… Our dream of life will end as dreams do end, abruptly and completely, when the sun rises, when the light comes. And we will think, All that fear and all that grief were about nothing. But that cannot be true. I can’t believe we will forget our sorrows altogether. That would mean forgetting that we had lived, humanly speaking. Sorrow seems to me to be a great part of the substance of human life.

if that last line doesn't do something to you, you ain't human. (less)

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May 09, 2007

Greg rated it

It often feels as if the contemporary literary scene has internalized Anna Karenina’s dictum on the nature of happiness—that it is not idiosyncratic, with the implication that it is not worth the kind of careful attention that literature applies to its subjects. We need look no further than our own lives to recognize the problem we’ll encounter if we preoccupy ourselves with the Tolstoyan “unhappy family” at the expense of the happy ones. Asked about our defining or most enlightening moments, mo...moreIt often feels as if the contemporary literary scene has internalized Anna Karenina’s dictum on the nature of happiness—that it is not idiosyncratic, with the implication that it is not worth the kind of careful attention that literature applies to its subjects. We need look no further than our own lives to recognize the problem we’ll encounter if we preoccupy ourselves with the Tolstoyan “unhappy family” at the expense of the happy ones. Asked about our defining or most enlightening moments, most of us are as likely to recount happy memories as we are moments of despair. Yet too often, contemporary literature ignores this. Authors able to give the lie to Tolstoy by rendering joy as a complex substance are few and far between: think Ron Carlson, Laurie Colwin, Ellen Gilchrist, Richard Russo.

In this context, Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead comes not just as a breath of fresh air, but as a ray of light, quietly penetrating to the heart of mysteries regarding joy and love, life and death. Because it’s written as a series of missives from the aged narrator to his young son, meant not to be read until long after the narrator’s death, Gilead is largely plotless—a conflict of sorts between the narrator and a friend’s child does eventually develop, but it is a quiet conflict, and one that doesn’t become clear until nearly halfway through the novel. The narrative is never as important as the meditations that surround it.

This is a novel that celebrates life, that variegated communion between inner and outer worlds, between ego and experience. But Robinson is also concerned with death, not only as the inevitable end of that communion but also as its thematic counterpoint. If Robinson’s territory here is the spiritual life of one man in particular, her thematic concern is how we in general can face the ends of our lives without despair or resort to existential reframings of the problem—how we can face the prospect of death, in fact, with quiet gratitude and even joy. Robinson’s portrayal of religion is especially deft; instead of opiate or panacea, her narrator’s Christianity serves as a lens, providing a stasis and a vocabulary through which the novel can wrestle with its concerns.

Ultimately, the quiet conclusions that Gilead seems to favor—that the experience of existence is one that we should treasure as a gift, that we too often lose sight of the immense beauty of the world amidst our quotidian bustle, that love and charity have the power to remake lives—are neither religious nor secular. Rather, they are humanist; they all concern a belief in the fundamental dignity of human lives. Is it melodramatic to say that these are the kind of quiet encouragements that we could usefully carry in our minds into the shadows of our own personal Gethsemanes? Regardless, Gilead offers us, in its portrait of a long life reflected upon with some degree of contentment, a reminder of just how deep, enthralling, and abidingly strange happiness can be.

Perhaps the problem is not that happiness is not idiosyncratic enough to be worth investigating. The problem may be instead that happiness is simply too big for most writers to write convincingly about, that perhaps joy, like God, is too capacious to fully describe. Yet here is the rare novel that suggests insights into the natures of both.(less)

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Oct 12, 2007

Jessica rated it

Recommends it for: heathens

This book is amazing. I can't believe those frikkin twits didn't give Marilynne Robinson the Pulitzer for this..... oh wait, they did. Well, I can't believe they didn't give her two!

Seriously, you are probably thinking, "I've heard this book takes the form of an elderly, angina-stricken preacher in Iowa's long, Lord-laden letter to his young son about how beautiful the world is. I'm sure it's all very nice for some people, but I am way too big of a jerk to enjoy something like t...more

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Feb 05, 2009

J rated it

This is not a review. I wrote something that aspired to be a review but fell short. In the end all you really need to know is that I loved it. I finished it standing in line at the grocery with tears running down my face because it was that beautiful. It’s the ruminations of a man at the end of his life, it’s confession, it’s revelation, it’s a parable in a parable. It’s hopeful. Read it.

I found this quote written on a scrap of something in my purse. "I know more than I know and...more

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Aug 03, 2008

Aleathia Drehmer rated it

Recommends it for: people looking for accountability in themselves

Sometimes we read books that were meant for certain times in our lives though we don't know that when we pick them up. I started reading "Gilead" simply because it was on the Pulitzer list and for no other reason. I knew nothing about it. I like reading books blind sometimes. It makes their impact that much more to savor.

I am not a church going woman. I think we all know that by now. I have been a Buddhist for many years...over 10, though that absolves me of nothing, ...moreSometimes we read books that were meant for certain times in our lives though we don't know that when we pick them up. I started reading "Gilead" simply because it was on the Pulitzer list and for no other reason. I knew nothing about it. I like reading books blind sometimes. It makes their impact that much more to savor.

I am not a church going woman. I think we all know that by now. I have been a Buddhist for many years...over 10, though that absolves me of nothing, just makes me responsible to myself for the way I carry on my business. These days, that responsibility can be questioned. This entire book is written from the eyes of an aging minister as a letter or journal to his young son who he will not see grow up. It is a collection of his thoughts, of the history of his family that no one else would be able to tell. It is the most loving thing I have read in a long time.

I have always admired religion in some way...not always agreed with the strictness of it or the seeming way it does not forgive those that don't believe, but I do know that there are kind hearted religious people out there that love and forgive because it is in their hearts. Because they somehow feel the Lord around them. This, whether you believe in God or not, is an enviable thing in life to have such a comfort for when times are not so good, or choices in life get questioned.

This book is about finding some sort of peace with the life the man lived and relaying his hopes and dreams for his young son as he grows into a man. It is a testament to recognizing the faults in oneself and being able to stand in front of them and be accountable, even if they cannot be changed. I find myself here in this place right now. This place of accountability and though it is tough, I feel some sense of relief knowing I have placed a hand upon my heart, felt it beating in the truest manner in the choices I have made.

A new friend, just added today, sent me a song he wrote while on tour last year. It touched me to tears. It was a nice, long winding tale about traveling, about singers and life just happening the way it does. "Trying to find what matters, if it matters anymore. Every life is part of every life lived before." Thanks for that Doug.

I will leave this entry with a passage from "Gilead" and hope that maybe it encourages you to read the book.

"He did then seem to me the angel of himself, brooding over the mysteries his mortal life describes, the deep things of man. And of course that is exactly what he is. 'For who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him?' In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable--which I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, untraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us."
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Apr 21, 2008

Giedra rated it

Recommended to Giedra by: Carrie Neal

Shelves: book-club

My book club read this book right before I joined the club. Most of the members hated it, and at many subsequent book club discussions, books were compared to Gilead as, "well, at least it was easier to read than Gilead, etc." After several months of hearing about this book, I decided I needed to read this book for myself. (Perhaps to get more insight into my fellow book club members!)

Well, I liked the book a LOT. I was very surprised to find that it's a pretty slim boo...more

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Jan 12, 2012

Inder rated it

Recommends it for: Humanity

Recommended to Inder by: Elizabeth

Shelves: philosophyspirituality, read-2007, 21st-century, fiction, read-2008, midwest, race, read-2012

Yes, I have now read this THREE times. That should really speak for itself.
___________________________

12/1/07 I've been thinking and thinking about this book, so I find myself coming back to this review.

The basic plot (such as it is - this is a character driven book in the most basic sense): An old preacher finds out that he is dying, and writes a journal/memoir to his seven year old son.

There are a couple of breathtaking scenes in the book, that have...moreYes, I have now read this THREE times. That should really speak for itself.
___________________________

12/1/07 I've been thinking and thinking about this book, so I find myself coming back to this review.

The basic plot (such as it is - this is a character driven book in the most basic sense): An old preacher finds out that he is dying, and writes a journal/memoir to his seven year old son.

There are a couple of breathtaking scenes in the book, that have stuck with me. The narrator remembers a time in his childhood, in the late 19th century, when the local church burned down. The community came out in force to clean up the wreckage and salvage what could be salvaged. The women sang hymns while they worked. It began to rain, and the girl's skirts were dirty and wet, and their hair hung down their backs. His father offered him bread from his hands, covered in ash and soot. To the narrator, this was the most important "communion" of his life. The image comes up over and over again, and the theme is repeated when the narrator gives his son communion in his own church many years later (although he is too young to formally take communion). I thought it was so beautiful, the essence of what communion should be about.

Which brings me to another thing I loved about the book: The strong sense of generations, the passing of love and knowledge and problems from father to son through the generations. As my friend Elizabeth says, the book lingers long on issues of masculinity. I related so strongly to the characters that I didn't even really notice that until it was pointed out to me! But it's true, this is a book about how to be a righteous man (in the best, least judgmental meaning of "righteous"), and how to grow your sons into righteous men.

I also loved the very last scene. I don't want to spoil it, but it is so beautiful. This is one of those rare novels where the end does not disappoint.

And, of course, there's the rhythm of the narration, and the language. So slow, lilting, sad, and lovely, like one of the slower Sacred Harp hymns I love to sing. It's almost Homeric, in the sense that it feels like oral history, with the rhythm of very old-fashioned storytelling.

Reading around on Goodreads, this is apparently something many readers found difficult and criticize on their reviews. I can see that it's an acquired taste.

I loved it, but I read older novels all the time, constantly seeking out that softer, slower, more detailed rhythm of writing that seemed more common pre-TV. If your obsessions tend more towards the cyber-punk post-modern, this book might seem too heavy and slow - in fact, it has almost no plot at all, which might throw some people off.

But of course, the adoption of an older style is, in itself, a bit interesting and pastiche-y. But now I'm out of my comfort zone - I'll let someone else deconstruct it.

Meanwhile, I highly recommend this book to all of my serious, thoughtful, passionate friends who like serious, thoughtful, passionate books.(less)

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Oct 14, 2011

Eric rated it

Shelves: ficciones, hearts-laid-bare, malick-should-film-it, westward-ho, war

Most days, I didn’t enjoy reading Gilead, or look forward to resuming it—perhaps because the narrator is the character I warmed to last; but it builds to a powerful valediction—

A stranger might ask why there is a town here at all. Our own children might ask. And who could answer them? It was just a dogged little outpost in the sand hills, within striking distance of Kansas. That’s really all it was meant to be. It was a place John Brown and Jim Lane could fall back on when they need

...more

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Mar 06, 2008

Kj rated it

Shelves: own-it, seattle-school-of-theology

Dear Son:
The Too-Little-Too-Late Dilemma of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead

It’s deceptively tempting to approach a book like Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, and see only the main character’s theological musings. After all, in a novel about an old man reminiscing about faith and family, there’s a plethora of weighty spiritual content; everything from careful exegesis of Genesis 22 to references to Karl Barth’s Epistle to the Romans. Needless to say, this is no simple “I remember when…”...moreDear Son:
The Too-Little-Too-Late Dilemma of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead

It’s deceptively tempting to approach a book like Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, and see only the main character’s theological musings. After all, in a novel about an old man reminiscing about faith and family, there’s a plethora of weighty spiritual content; everything from careful exegesis of Genesis 22 to references to Karl Barth’s Epistle to the Romans. Needless to say, this is no simple “I remember when…” fable of love and loss. Issues are being grappled with, weighed and eschewed. However, to review the novel from a theological stance cannot merely mean discussing old John Ames’ opinions on war, forgiveness or predestination. That job belongs primarily to his congregants and family within the narrative. The question I, the reader, encountered was of the theology of a book wherein the entire premise is of a man wishing to leave a testament of his “better self” (p. 202) for his seven year old, but spends his final days journaling, instead of spending time with his son. This is the battle I fought with John Ames and Marilynne Robinson throughout my reading.
It began when I realized that about every four pages I found myelf drowsing off to sleep, or thinking of topics far beyond the narrator’s journal entries. As I had approached the novel with great enthusiasm (fiction at last!) I wondered what could be sending my mind off into orbit. Why the dissociation? From the frustration with not being able to stay focused from page to page, paragraph to paragraph, soon emerged actual anger. I found myself choosing to put the book down and find other activities, almost as if to spite the narrator. Something was wrong. I was refusing to sit passively and listen.
With a little reflection, this is what I discovered. I was incredibly angry that John Ames was writing on and on about how much he loved his son and his wife and how he wished he wasn't about to die, and there he was, “reflecting” instead of living! Enter the transference. I realized how little tolerance I had for the “nobility” of a strong, silent-type preacher man finally unloading the deepest parts of his heart and soul onto paper, instead of through interaction. The drowsiness coming over me was of not wanting to listen to this man write. I wanted to see him take action. I didn’t want to honor him by reading his last testament, because I do not respect the idea that somehow, as long as you say what you feel before you die, it doesn’t matter how little you expressed to those around you until that point. The book brought up anger with my father, his father, and the generations of quiet, long-suffering, missionary-type men I am descended from. Though I am not a man, nor very quiet, I know about long-suffering, and I could not suffer the boredom or veiled anger that lay between the lines of John Ames’ memoirs. I wanted to rip the journal from his hands, and essentially, tell Marilynne Robinson that I refuse to applaud her character’s poetry, theology or self-reflection, when he is in essence, taking the easy way out of sharing himself.
I’ll admit, there are plenty of passages in the novel that show Ames’ growth and interaction with others. Even the fact that he married late in life reveals that he was unsatisfied persisting in the loneliness of listening to baseball games on the radio, writing sermons and hiding from neighbors when they knocked on his door. However, all his loving descriptions of sunsets, children’s laughter and the smell of raindrops, appear hollow the moment he starts describing his son playing outside as he writes. In that the entire purpose of the novel is for this aging father to express his heart to his son, for all the descriptions of moments of communion, (p. 103), I gained no sense whatsoever of how this father related to his son. Every human interaction Ames (Robinson) writes is marked by constraint, weariness and shy civility. The aching lack of intimacy in this novel made every page a grueling ordeal to wade through. “Take action!” I shouted. “Stop writing!”
I’m left to wonder what Robinson feels about her main character. I sense that she adores his humble (though never naïve) faith, and the grace he tries to offer others. But the portrait she paints, or at least the format she has chosen to use, counteracts any message I might derive from the old preacher’s wisdom and experience. By writing the story as a last testament in-progress, Robinson has created an utterly passive character, a true bystander of the life he is narrating. I don’t believe this was her goal. We are clearly supposed to revel in the homely and kindly spiritual reflections of a faithful old coot that is continually surprised by beauty. But for this passive bystander, I felt mostly pity, and quite a bit of anger.
Another perspective, however, is that Robinson has rightly captured the unfortunate experience of so many pastors, especially of Ames’ (and my grandfather’s) generation: that of distance and objectivity. My grandfather once spoke of a minister he served under who believed it was un-Christian for a minister to befriend his congregants because it would cloud his ability to pastor. Can we even imagine a pastor who would not eat supper at a parishioner’s home? Does Ames’ loner quality, his reticence to become entangled, simply reflect the expectations put on a country preacher? This was the time (and the concept persists in some realms) where the pastor was expected to run every aspect of the church. Ames’ statement that everyday felt essentially like Sunday because once one sermon was over, it was already time to work on the next (p. 232-233), reflects the overburdened lifestyle of one who is expected to shepherd whole congregations by sheer determination and will power- with no rest or support system other than other local pastors (Boughton). This symptomatic lone wolf quality made it difficult for me to believe Ames’ speculations on relationships, because I could hear his strained resentment trying to come out. (It finally emerges somewhat in regards to being given a godson without his consent, and over Jack Boughton’s flagrant disrespect for others).
I have not written much of Ames and Jack Boughton, mostly because the character was introduced far too late in the novel to bear the climactic significance it was clearly supposed to have. The real story should have been how Ames chooses to reveal himself and be present with his young son, not his struggle to give grace to his black sheep of a godson. That is indeed significant, but is again, un-served by the journal format of the book. The developing story of Jack Boughton’s struggles have no place in Ames’ letters to his son. Confined by Robinson’s poorly chosen device, the last fourth of the book (despite being the most readable) breaks the rules set in the beginning of Ames writing to his son. Instead, the reader encounters Robinson’s clunky exposition about the life of a character we have not been effectively convinced to care about. Overall, this is my greatest criticism for the novel, both artistically and theologically: it’s nearly impossible to care for these characters when they are introduced as part of an avoidant old man’s journal entry. The richer story to be told here is that of an old man opening his heart through action and engagement with his community, after a long life of loneliness. In order to experience this part of the story, Robinson needed to give us voices other than Ames to listen to. Ames’ emotional distance in interpersonal relationships makes his spiritual and poetic ruminations fall short of the impact Robinson so clearly intended. This novel made my heart ache; wanting the silent men in my life to get up from their journals, and actually say what they’re thinking. And this, perhaps, is too much to require of a novel. Is it too much to require of these old men as well? Isn’t the real point of a last testament the admittance that too much has gone unsaid? Should we celebrate a theology that waits too long to speak?

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Dec 17, 2008

Capitu rated it

Shelves: 2008, constant-reader-bookclub

I loved this book. The narrator’s voice is intimate and meditative. It feels so personal that one forgets that it is a piece of fiction and not a real memoir: an old, dying man writing a letter to his young son with a wise voice, but humane enough in his doubts and small – and big – desires.

It certainly is not a book for someone craving plot and action, but a philosophical meandering on life, death, love, parenthood and many of the other big questionings. Yet it does not feel hea...more

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May 31, 2007

Kip rated it

This is a lovely and profound book. Yes, in some parts it seemed a bit slow, and the slowness was reinforced for me by the fact that I'm a slow reader. When you read at the torrid pace of about 5 or 6 pages a day, it's sometimes hard to stay focused. Anyway, what I loved about this book is the way it captures the significance of ordinary things--the way sunlight shines in a room; the power of a glance or a kind gesture; the fairly mundane things that tie a community together; the ways in which t...more

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Jan 02, 2009

Ben rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, read-2008, pulitzer

This was somewhat hard to get into and very slow at times, but I believe those are my failings and not that of the author's.

I didn't really get hooked until about half way through. Though it is a short book, it is not a quick read. I was reading and rereading very slowly through most of this. In some ways I feel this novel may have been a bit above me and that I was not yet able to appreciate everything contained within on my first read. However, it is obvious that this book has a lo...more

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Jun 19, 2010

Jason rated it

· review of another edition

My 4 year old son is going to die...sometime in the future, like me--wishfully long after me--and we'll have no more time to talk. We should hopefully grow old together, but we'll grow old together as men. Yes, we'll always be father and son, but for the most part when we talk and share, he will be a man. What should I tell him now, as a boy? He's too young to remember, but I have so many things I want to say, to teach, to protect... There are things I want to tell him that are important no...more

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Jun 21, 2007

Noralil Fores rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Folks Interested in Religion & Redemption

Craddled within the world of Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, there's a quiet yearning, a desire inherently expressed within the novel's structure to slow down, to walk lightly, to observe without participation. In its reflections on religion and moral goodness, its story is undemanding, thoughtful and filled with a sense a peace, the kind found only when spiritual worries fade to divine acceptance.

Through the eyes John Ames, a Methodist preacher coming to terms with his immenient death...more

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Feb 27, 2009

Polly rated it

Recommends it for: Someone feeling reflective/meditative

Recommended to Polly by: Allison

Shelves: polly

This was a good book to read a bit at a time. It is written as a memoir from father (a Midwest preacher) to son, so it is very meditative and not the page-turner style that a person might whiz through in one sitting. I really enjoyed the thoughtful voice of the narrator, although it bogged down for me in the second half when he started to get into his issues with a neighbor. For the most part, I thought it was beautifully written. I had given it 3 stars, but I quoted so much from it that I ...more

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Jun 01, 2010

Lee rated it

Gilead, first off, surprised me with its humor and its clarity, both of which kept me engaged, not to mention graceful, lofted wisdom (which I expected to encounter, of course) that never really seemed pedantic thanks to the narrator's earnestness re: his doubts re: pretty much everything other than the nature of faith (ie, silence filling an empty church at dawn). I appreciated the baptizing cats, descriptions of water and light, and an ash-cake communion in the foreground with a ruined church ...more

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Jan 14, 2009

Dan rated it

· review of another edition

I've become more stingy about giving out 5 stars to a book. Gilead clearly earned 5 stars.

I've met some people who did not like this book at all. However, the writing style and inner-monologue/epistolary format of the book floored me. The author frequently made a pure connection with me, on many levels.

I didn't always enjoy the religious thoughts of the main character simply because I found some of the terminology and/or explanations he gave to be vague, circular, or...more

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Feb 02, 2009

Jed rated it

Recommends it for: Anyone in the world

Recommended to Jed by: Dawn Brimley, Lisa Clark

I don't like choosing favorites. I don't think I should be compelled to announce with any finality what is my favorite of anything. It's just too superlative for someone as indecisive as I am.

But if someone held a gun to my head and said they'd shoot me if I didn't name my favorite book in the world, my first thought would be Gilead. Since the first time I read it a few years ago, it has remained in me the way no other compilation of words ever has. To find God in a book-- and in...more

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May 17, 2007

Kyle rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction

Great book. A 76 year-old minister finds out he's dying and he writes a letter to his 7 year-old son. The whole book is a letter. Sounds kind of dull, but it's not. He tells all about his family in Kansas and Iowa, incorporating history and religion into the tale. The writing is so beautiful it's like poetry. And it's all just this old guy's thoughts. He has a lot to say, if you can dig it. Some of my favorite bits:

p.6
"Above all mind what you say. 'Behold how much wood is ...more

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Jan 10, 2009

BethAnn rated it

A poem of grace and redemption. I will read it over and over to gain a more profound sense of the deep currents that run beneath the seemingly ordinary surface of daily life. And though it's focused on a family of Protestant ministers in rural Iowa, seen through the eyes of an aged scion of that family, it's not at all a Christian book. This is a universal testament about the invisible threads that bind us to each other and to eternity.

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Oct 27, 2008

Doug Derry rated it

The disjointed ramblings and remembrances of an old man, made compelling by brief glimpses into starkly drawn characters, and by passages such as this,

"I feel sometimes as if I were a child who opens its eyes on the world once and sees amazing things it will never know any names for and then has to close its eyes again. I know this is all mere apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only lovelier for that. There is a human beauty in it. And I can't believe that, whe...more

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Jan 05, 2009

May rated it

Shelves: fiction

I loved the following quote: (when all seems to go terribly wrong) "I know there is a blessing in this somewhere" (p. 35). I suspect many of us could use this kind of thinking! I'm getting into the slow pace of the book, and the way it keeps coming back to some events which are tender to the main character, and the object of more circumvolutions and deeper digging. Wonder where it will take us.

January 1 2009. I still don't know where the novel will take me, but now I know i...more

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Jan 02, 2009

Jeanine Marie Swenson, MD, FAAP, FACC, LMFT rated it

The story, which seemed metaphorical to humankind's and Christianity's parental idea of God as father, was thought-provoking but too slow moving for my taste.

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Nov 19, 2008

Holli rated it

Shelves: book-group

This was another choice for our book discussion group. I really enjoyed it. As Michael Dirda, reviewer for The Washington Post wrote, it "is so serenely beautiful, and written in a prose so gravely measured and thoughtful, that one feels touched with grace just to read it." As I read, I jotted down page numbers and phrases that I thought were beautifully written. When I typed them up, I had two pages of them!

I really liked the passages in which the narrator describes...more

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Aug 09, 2008

Heather rated it

Recommends it for: patient readers

Recommended to Heather by: Burns Stanfield, Scott Stanfield

I had a very unusual experience with this book. I received it as a gift from my brother the minister and just could not get through it whatsoever - I gave up 20 pages in. I signed up for a mini-course on it (taught by said brother, plus another one of my brothers, the professor) and forced myself to read it. I found it tortuously slow going until the last 50 pages or so, but once I had finished it I started re-reading it immediately, just because I wanted to. And after the second read, I liked i...moreI had a very unusual experience with this book. I received it as a gift from my brother the minister and just could not get through it whatsoever - I gave up 20 pages in. I signed up for a mini-course on it (taught by said brother, plus another one of my brothers, the professor) and forced myself to read it. I found it tortuously slow going until the last 50 pages or so, but once I had finished it I started re-reading it immediately, just because I wanted to. And after the second read, I liked it a lot. The class itself illuminated the text - partly because my brothers are awesome, but also because the class was filled with small town Iowa ministers who had a lot to say - and a week's worth of discussions later, this ranks as one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. I don't think I have ever done such a turnaround on a book before. It seriously grows on you. It may take more than one reading for it to do so - but it's worth it.

The narrator of this book is an elderly minister in a small town in Iowa whose father and grandfather were ministers before him. It is very much about religion and family and small moments of transcendence and long periods of darkness. Written as a letter to his young son, the structure gives you history out of order and peppered with ramblings, so I often found myself doubling back to find a passage whose import I had missed the first time. It reveals itself slowly. I feel like the narrator sets his pace and it has nothing to do with the modern impulse to speed things along and that is one of the great strengths of the book, irritating though it may be at first. I'm from Iowa and there is no rushing an Iowan. Don't even try it. The character feels very authentic to me.

I would highly recommend this book, with the caveat that it's not it's not a page turner. In fact, my husband referred to it as a "page stayer". It is incredibly rewarding,however. I now love these characters and I can't wait for Robinson's next book, which is set in the same town. I think she is a brilliant writer.

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Jul 03, 2008

Robert rated it

Recommended to Robert by: Nick Hornby in his book "Housekeeping vs. the Dirt"

I don't like to review books until I'm finished, but I'm half way through this one and I have to say that it's really fantastic.

It may be one of the most beautifully written books I've ever read. It seems as though each word was chosen very carefully for maximum effect and yet it doesn't feel forced or make the book feel inauthentic in any way.

**Edited**

Now that I've finished it, I have to say that it was even better than I said at the mid-point.

I...more

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Apr 28, 2008

Nate rated it

Recommends it for: you

I just finished reading it this morning. I cried at its end, not for its end, nor because it was sad. It was beautiful. I sat there on the toilet reading until my legs were asleep to finish, a ridiculous place to experience beauty that would make one weep.

The book is no master piece of poetry, no epic, not the brash offspring of sharp wit or forceful essay of vast intellect. I would not call the story or its players particularly memorable. No surprising twists. No strange quirks. No ...more

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Apr 27, 2008

Jalena rated it

There are many passages in this book that have caused me to stop and read over and over. Truly beautiful writing on the simplicity and beauty of everyday life, and of faith redemption and forgiveness. One of the best books I have read in a long time.
One of my favorite passages:

"This is an important thing, which I have told many people, and which my father told me, and which his father told him. When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at a...more

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Feb 25, 2008

Evil_Dead_Junkie rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: literature, theology

To any non Christians wishing to understand The Christian mindset I can scarcely think of a better representative then Gilead. I'm most grateful to Robinson for illustrating how Christianity when practiced properly is a conduit to thought rather then a detriment to it the way it's critics always assume.

However, I'm even more grateful to the way in which she writes the book. I'm a fast reader and all too often I'll blast through a novel with only the faintest sensation of having actu...more

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Jan 03, 2008

Jonathan Bassett rated it

"grace is not so poor a thing that it cannot present itself in any number of ways", a beautiful quote from the reverend John Ames, the Father who, at the end of his life, writes this extensive letter/journal to his son. This book is beautiful, showing how grace comes to us in an endless number of forms, shapes, faces, people, words, circumstances, trials, and depth. I feel that I only grasped an iota of grace contained in this book, and that I need to read it several more times to rea...more

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About Marilynne Robinson

Her 1980 novel, Housekeeping, won a Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for best first novel and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Her second novel, Gilead, was acclaimed by critics and received the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and the 2005 Ambassador Book Award.

Her third novel, Home, was published in ...more

More about Marilynne Robinson...

Books by Marilynne Robinson

The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought

Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self

Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution

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Quotes from Gilead

“Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life.” — 78 people liked it

“Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was.” — 43 people liked it

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