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Jan 06, 2009

brian rated it:

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 More...

47 comments like (41 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

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 More...

4 comments like (39 people liked it)

Oct 12, 2007

Jessica rated it:

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...

6 comments like (40 people liked it)

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...

15 comments like (21 people liked it)

Aug 03, 2008

Aleathia rated it:

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, More...

1 comment like (12 people liked it)

Apr 21, 2008

Giedra rated it:

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...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Jan 12, 2012

Inder rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (11 people liked it)

Oct 14, 2011

Eric rated it:

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...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Mar 06, 2008

Kj rated it:

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…” More...

9 comments like (18 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2008

Capitu rated it:

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...

3 comments like (8 people liked it)

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...

3 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jan 02, 2009

Ben rated it:

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...

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

Jun 19, 2010

Jason rated it:

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...

19 comments like (30 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Noralil rated it:

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...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 27, 2009

Polly rated it:

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...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 04, 2011

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...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 14, 2009

Dan rated it:

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...

4 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 02, 2009

Jed rated it:

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...

2 comments like (11 people liked it)

May 17, 2007

Kyle rated it:

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...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

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.

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Oct 27, 2008

Doug 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...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 05, 2009

May rated it:

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...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 02, 2009

Jeanine Marie 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.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 19, 2008

Holli rated it:

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...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 09, 2008

Heather rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 03, 2008

Robert rated it:

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...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Apr 28, 2008

Nate rated it:

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...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

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...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Feb 25, 2008

Evil_Dead_Junkie rated it:

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...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 03, 2008

Jonathan 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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