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Gilead

(Gilead #1)

Marilynne Robinson

3.85 · Rating details · 84,391 ratings · 10,801 reviews

In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, a kind of last testament to his remarkable forebears.

'It is a book of such meditative calm, such spiritual intensity that is seems miraculous that her silence was only for 23 years; such measure of wisdom is the fruit of a lifetime. Robinson's prose, aligned with the sublime simp

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Kindle Edition, 288 pages

Published May 7th 2009 by Virago (first published October 28th 2004)

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May 09, 2007 Greg rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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 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, 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. ...more

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Oct 04, 2007 Jessica rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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 that."

Well, let me ...more

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Jul 16, 2011 William2 rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: us, 21-ce, fiction

This novel reminds me—with its beautifully spare prose and the bleak stoicism of its characters—of three books: Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses, Willa Cather's My Ántonia and Martin Amis's House of Meetings. This is not meant as a statement of influence, but simply one of kinship. The writing in all of these novels is conversational in tone and beautifully compressed, which is enormously hard to do, though it appears easy.

Gilead is the story of a Protestant pastor, the Reverend John Ames, w This novel reminds me—with its beautifully spare prose and the bleak stoicism of its characters—of three books: Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses, Willa Cather's My Ántonia and Martin Amis's House of Meetings. This is not meant as a statement of influence, but simply one of kinship. The writing in all of these novels is conversational in tone and beautifully compressed, which is enormously hard to do, though it appears easy.

Gilead is the story of a Protestant pastor, the Reverend John Ames, who, in the midwestern town of Gilead of about 1950 or so, writes to his then seven-year-old son. The pastor is dying and the letter is intended to be read when his son has reached adulthood.

In it the pastor speaks of his grandfather and his father, and the long tradition of Christian ministry in the family, that, the writer assumes, will not continue with the recipient of the document which we, a little guiltily perhaps, hold in our hands. For the sense is very strong here of the reader as interloper, gazing at personal documents not meant for his eyes.

And just as we surely know that what we read can only resolve itself in death and dissolution, and we brace ourselves for that end--we've been given fair warning--yet despite this we find that there is no way to steel ourselves for the conclusion. We know vaguely the shape it may take, and yet it still moves us indescribably. This to my mind is great writing and no merely clever metafictional trickery can ever supplant it.

Christianity is not entirely the point of the story. Though the pastor has been driven by it the whole of his life and it's integral to his concern for family and flock, and the natural world, which he sees as pervaded by spirit at every level. Faith here is the means by which Marilynne Robinson shows us her characters' humanity, the tenuousness of their existence, their lives of suffering and loss, impermanence and fleetingness.

It has been wonderful for this agnostic to see how the old school, middle-American Christianity used to work in a good man. That is to say, how it drives him to ecstasis, to open-heartedness and love and an almost unbearable joy. It's pretty heady stuff. No doubt those so inclined will find the novel a powerful affirmation of faith, which is a fine thing. My point is that it would be a mistake to read it solely as a Christian novel. Masters like Naguib Mahfouz and Isaac Bashevis Singer have produced similarly powerful fictions using far different religious contexts. And Ms. Robinson's excellent work, like theirs, transcends its religiosity to bring us something deeply universal.

V.S Naipaul wrote in one of his books on Islam that the great gift of religious people is their confidence. How lovely, I've always felt, to be able to take solace in such belief. The Reverend Ames never wavers in his faith, but it is only by constant self-questioning that he's able to sustain it. Life is suffering. I have been wrong when I've thought of faith as an opiate. For the thinking person it is as challenging as any other form of mindful living. ...more

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Aug 02, 2017 Elyse Walters rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Utterly absorbing...just finished it!!!
Unbearably moving!
At the beginning- I fantasized such a letter from my own father.
As a child I use to look up at the sky and wonder where he was - and yes-- talk to him
- and imagine him talking to me.
There are sentences that I read several times - the ones I thought about when walking - between reading sessions.
"I saw a full moon rising just as the sun was going down. Each of them standing on its edge, with the most wonderful light between them. It see ...more

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Mar 01, 2017 Michael Finocchiaro rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: pulitzer-winning-fiction, novels, fiction, american-21st-c, american-20th-c, pulitzer-fiction

A beautiful book of great wisdom and tenderness. Melancholy, but hopeful. It well-deserved the Pulitzer for Fiction in 2005, and surprisingly Marilynne's second book written 24 years after her first, Housekeeping (which I have also reviewed here on GR).
In Gilead, Iowa, Rev John Ames is a 76yo preacher married to a much younger woman with whom he has a 7yo son. The time is the 50s and Rev writes this book to his son regretting that he will soon be dead while his son is still a child, so he wante A beautiful book of great wisdom and tenderness. Melancholy, but hopeful. It well-deserved the Pulitzer for Fiction in 2005, and surprisingly Marilynne's second book written 24 years after her first, Housekeeping (which I have also reviewed here on GR).
In Gilead, Iowa, Rev John Ames is a 76yo preacher married to a much younger woman with whom he has a 7yo son. The time is the 50s and Rev writes this book to his son regretting that he will soon be dead while his son is still a child, so he wanted to leave something concrete about himself for his son to read when he is older. So, the book talks about Rev Ames relationships to his own father and grandfather (both also parsons) who are both long since passed away, as well as other anecdotes about how he met his wife and some of the philosophical and spiritual questions with which he struggles.
In these musings, he speaks of his grandfather who lost an eye in the Civil War and fled Iowa at one point across the border into Kansas. When Ames is a boy, he and his father seek out the tomb of the grandfather and this adventure marks the boy forever. They find the grave and tidy it up and and as they finish they "saw a full moon rising just as the sun was going down. Each of them was standing on its edge, with the most wonderful light between them. It seemed as if you could touch it, as if there were palpable currents of light passing back and forth, or as if there were great taut skeins of light suspended between them." (P. 16) Ames memories of his grandfather are "like a man everlastingly struck by lightning, so that there was an ashiness about his clothes and his hair never settled and his eye had a look of tragic alarm when he wasn't actually sleeping." (P. 57) This symbol of ash also appears when the original church of Ames' father burns down and the folks of the village are rummaging through the remains as rain breaks out. Times being quite poor due to the Depression, his father shelters himself with Ames under a wagon and they share an ash-flavored biscuit that the father had in his jacket pocket, "it was truly the bread of affliction, because everyone wad poor then." (P. 117)
Ames loves his son and dotes on him but feels an immense gulf of age between them. His descriptions of the boy and his mother playing are priceless like this one: "There's a shimmer on a child's hair, in the sunlight. There are rainbow colors in it, tiny beams of just the same colors you can see in the dew sometimes." (P. 60) Or, "You appear to be altogether happy. I remember those first experiments with fundamental things, gravity and light, and what an absolute pleasure they were. And there is your mother. 'Don't go so high,' she says. You'll mind. You're a good fellow." (P.127)
On of the themes that the latter part of the book focuses on increasingly towards the end is the rather ambiguous character, John Ames "Jack" Boughton, the son of Ames' best friend, Rev Boughton, who Ames had baptized as a baby. Jack spends a lot of time with Ames's wife and son and has some theological arguments with Ames. For a while, he is portrayed kind of like Ivan Karamazov, the eternal doubter and manipulator, and I even thought he might have aims on the Rev's family should he pass away. Without giving away any spoilers, let us just say that Robison masterfully portrays this character as astonishingly human.
In summary, it is an extraordinary book and deserves to be read again and again. I'll close with this beautiful passage from towards the end of the book which, I think, sums up what Ames really is saying throughout:
"Though I must say all this has given me a new glimpse of the ongoingness of the world. We fly forgotten as a dream, certainly, leaving the forgetful world behind us to trample and mar and misplace everything we ever cared for. That is just the way of it, and it is remarkable." (P. 218) ...more

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Jul 19, 2020 Julie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: pulitzer-prize-for-fiction-winner, iowa, reading-road-trip-2020

Reading Road Trip 2020

Current location: Iowa

My reread of Marilynne Robinson's Gilead had me squirming the past two weeks like a child in church, enduring a boring sermon.

Boring? No, not boring. Deep, profound, and, at the time, very unwanted.

I've been feeling edgy and petulant these last two weeks. I actually pulled my mask off in a grocery store the other day, panting with claustrophobia. I've been agitated; and I certainly haven't been in the mood to listen to some dying man drone on and on ab ...more

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Mar 06, 2008 Kj rated it it was ok · review of another edition

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…” fable of love an 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…” 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?

...more

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Apr 27, 2008 J rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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 must learn it fr ...more

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Jun 10, 2010 Jason rated it really liked 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 now, th ...more

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Nov 23, 2011 Chaybyrd rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle-read, read-in-2012, so-bad-it-made-me-mad, borrrrrring

I am devastated by how much I despised this novel. It was one of the most uninspired stories about Christianity, forgiveness and familial bonds I have ever read.

I can't help but wonder if this is the first plotless novel to win a Pulitzer. I'll be on the look out. The framework of the "story" is a dying minister writing in his diary presumably for his now 7 year old son to read after his death. The first person father writing to his son narrative was horrid. I felt like the entire book was one ...more

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Jan 05, 2009 brian rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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 category, i think G 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 category, i think Gilead does. traditional narrative is replaced by the writings of one John Ames, a dying 77 yr old congregationalist minister – future readings intended for his young son in the form of warnings, anecdotes, memories, lessons, and personal thoughts mostly on god, existence, belief, morality, and family. (not nearly as heavy as it sounds. the tone's 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. ...more

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Oct 29, 2017 Dolors rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: The good and the gracious

Shelves: dost, read-in-2017

Old reverend John Ames writes a long farewell letter to his seven-year old son after he is informed of a cardiovascular problem that will eventually take his life.
What starts as a chronicle of his childhood memories and the life stories of his father and grandfather, also pastors, and the ongoing tensions between them about the use of religion to serve their ideals, progressively becomes an introspective, fragmented confession where the old man reveals his soul to the reader, but mostly, to him Old reverend John Ames writes a long farewell letter to his seven-year old son after he is informed of a cardiovascular problem that will eventually take his life.
What starts as a chronicle of his childhood memories and the life stories of his father and grandfather, also pastors, and the ongoing tensions between them about the use of religion to serve their ideals, progressively becomes an introspective, fragmented confession where the old man reveals his soul to the reader, but mostly, to himself.
A person from his past, his namesake, and somehow alter-ego, reappears in this transcendental moment of the minister’s life; right when he is about to lose what he loves most: his much younger wife Lila and his son. The miracles that were sent to him in his golden years are now threatened by a man who seems evil by nature. Ames will have to pass the final test he has preached about in his countless sermons and assimilate the real meaning of love, grace and forgiveness.

With luminous, patient voice, John Ames reveals the nooks and crannies of past griefs, fears and weaknesses, exposed through the filter of his unfaltering faith. Prolonged loneliness, jealousy, covetousness, envy and other corroding emotions nag at the essential goodness of a man confronted with his last days in this world. As his nemesis approaches, Ames will gradually rise up to the son he aspired to be and the father he could have been.

This slowly paced novel, almost philosophical in nature and devoid of plot, told in the first person narrator using the stream of consciousness technique, might be the ultimate parable of the Prodigal Son, revisited by a humble but highly literate reverend in a forsaken village in the bare plains of Iowa, the town of Gilead. Places that cast no allure are likely to be the scenarios for miracles, if the observer notices a certain slant of light, or the moonbeams washing clean the dusty paths in silver streams, or the soft, velvety caress of a voice speaking kindly to us.
Ames’ unremarkable life story is also the testimony of the history of a country that witnessed three wars in three generations and the violent genesis between them, between families, between fathers and sons, and the wounds that never healed properly because permanent estrangement settled in for good. At the end, Ames is faced with a very simple question, which, according to the reader’s understanding of a blessing, he might answer fully, or he might elude.

Marilynne Robinson’s prose reads like a prayer. It exudes profound religiosity, but it’s not necessary to be a participant in the Christian doctrines to feel comfortable in its magnanimous embrace. She includes the reader, appeals to every cell of his humanity and leaves several doors open for him to walk out, un-judged and free, but above all, totally and wholly recognized, and therefore, always forgiven. ...more

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Apr 01, 2015 Fabian rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Minister John Ames' insistence on leading a virtuous life becomes a pain in the neck. His personal and circular logic goes nowhere, and his daily ministrations, well, you really couldn't give less a care about. And this is truly awful folks. These are very deep thoughts from father to son, directly from the death bed. & our main thought through this all becomes: Wow, the dude's taking his awful sweet-ass time to die! ...more

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Jul 23, 2008 Paula rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Ponderous. That's "Gilead" in a word. It's supposed to be the slow, insightful reflections of an old preacher writing a letter about his life to his son. Because, you see, the preacher is going to die soon. Actually, most of the book is so slow you feel like he's dying right then and there. Or at least, you wish he would drop dead, because then the book would be over. Keeling over might even be an improvement, since then something would happen.

My guess is that after twenty years of not writing, ...more

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Aug 08, 2010 Meredith Holley marked it as abandoned · review of another edition

Recommended to Meredith by: Pulitzer

Shelves: up-hill-both-ways-in-the-snow, needs-a-sassy-gay-friend-real-bad, reviewed

I believe the audio of this book is read by Santa Claus, so that is nice. Not nice enough for me to finish it, though. I tried the printed copy and the audio, and while I made it slightly farther in the audio, I just can’t do it. I think listening to this in the car creates a severe hazard because of the imminent danger of me falling asleep.

Having read Olive Kitteridge and this, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Pulitzer committee is looking for books about bumbling old people whose kids may I believe the audio of this book is read by Santa Claus, so that is nice. Not nice enough for me to finish it, though. I tried the printed copy and the audio, and while I made it slightly farther in the audio, I just can’t do it. I think listening to this in the car creates a severe hazard because of the imminent danger of me falling asleep.

Having read Olive Kitteridge and this, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Pulitzer committee is looking for books about bumbling old people whose kids may or may not like them. It’s probably a somewhat universal theme, except for someone like me who knows how I feel about my parents and does not have children, but is it a compelling theme? After a while, I don’t really care whether the kids like them or not. I just want them to stop talking about how bread was cheaper in their day, uphill both ways in the snow barefoot.

It seems like there are two completely valid reasons this book would be a compelling read for a person. First, I can hypothetically see how the nature of an older father writing to a young son before the father dies might hit some kind of nostalgia button for people concerned about their own or their parents’ death. That seems understandable. I don’t really have anything to say about that or feel that way, but maybe the rambling nature of this book would hold some kind of charm if you felt like that. Maybe if this old gentleman were my grandfather, I would feel more interested. But, then again, maybe not. Maybe I am just hardened to this type of thing.

Second, I think there might be something about the religious and spiritual ideas in here that might seem charming and identifiable to either someone who hates religion altogether or someone who is surrounded by unreasonable religion. Again, that seems fair, and I don’t really have much to say about it.

I don’t think I am in any of those spaces, so this book to me was more like someone approaching me on the street, when I’m late to an appointment, and trying to tell me about how he recently bought gum, and what the clerk who sold it said to him, and his various thoughts about sprinkling versus emersion baptism. I am happy to say I have no opinion about those things, nor do I think they are interesting. Luckily, I have the option of walking away from this rambling stranger and moving on to other strangers who might be talking about things that are more actively interesting to me. ...more

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May 17, 2013 Dave Schaafsma rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: spiritual, fiction-21st-century, best-books-ever, father-brother-sons-book, books-loved-2015

A Balm in Gilead

There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole;
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin sick soul.

Some times I feel discouraged, 
And think my work’s in vain, 
But then the Holy Spirit 
Revives my soul again. --Traditional African American spiritual.

Gilead is a novel in the form of a letter from a small town (Gilead, Iowa) Congregationalist minister John Ames, 77, to his 7 year old son, written in 1956 as he assumes he is near death from heart troubles so his son can, later, as ...more

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Jan 25, 2015 Violet wells rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 21st-century, contemporary-american-fiction, pulitzer

John Ames is a pastor in the forsaken town of Gilead. Ames, after losing his first wife and child to a difficult labour, has remarried late in life to a much younger woman and so at the ripe old age of seventy six has a very young son who he realises he will not see grow to manhood. So at the end of his life he is writing what he believes to be a kind of epistle to the beauty of God’s world for his young son. He is attempting to bestow grace on his son. He gives him advice – “I would advise you John Ames is a pastor in the forsaken town of Gilead. Ames, after losing his first wife and child to a difficult labour, has remarried late in life to a much younger woman and so at the ripe old age of seventy six has a very young son who he realises he will not see grow to manhood. So at the end of his life he is writing what he believes to be a kind of epistle to the beauty of God’s world for his young son. He is attempting to bestow grace on his son. He gives him advice – “I would advise you against defensiveness on principle. It precludes the best eventualities along with the worst.” The father-son (and Holy Ghost) relationship is very much at the heart of this novel’s traction. The first half of the novel has a languid old world pace, brimming with tenderness and somewhat idealised musings on the beauty of life (the world appears glorious in the light of Ames’ imminent departure from it) and on family and the town of Gilead’s history. “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.” Reading the languorous gentle lilt of Robinson’s prose is like being up in a tree house with the huge night sky spiralling its stars overhead, and like the stars the text raises both wonder and elementary doubts. Ames creates a tapestry of all the things that have formed him. Except there’s a sense of selective memory playing a big part. Ames, understandably, wants to paint a flattering portrait of himself. About half way through I was almost beginning to run out of patience with his benevolent tender self-serving musings, wondering where the novel was going. Then Jack Boughton arrives on the scene and the novel acquires all the contrast and tension it was beginning to lack. Jack is the wayward son of his best friend. As a teenager he stole from Ames, deliberately seeking to antagonise him. Ames doesn’t like him. He especially doesn’t like him when he begins playing with his boy and talking to his wife. All of a sudden Ames begins to appear less than Christian, shadowed and soured by envy and resentment. Jack is a kind of shadow self, an alter-ego with whom Ames has to reconcile and the second half of this novel is a moving account of his struggle to find the necessary forgiveness within himself to bring about this reconciliation.

What Gilead lacks in momentum and dramatic tension is more than compensated for by the life affirming wisdom it contains in such generous measure. ...more

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Nov 05, 2015 Sara rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, pulitzer-prize-winners, favorites

John Ames is old and he is dying. His wife is much younger than he is and he has a six year old son that he has no chance of seeing grown. In response, he begins a journal that reads like a long letter to be read someday in the future by his son. Ames is a preacher, and much of what he discusses is couched in terms of his religion and his beliefs, but what he is facing and has faced in life is so universal that even an atheist might relate.

As Ames details the closing days of his life, we see th ...more

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Oct 30, 2015 Lynne King rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: a-must-to-read, 2016-books-to-be-read

I am so disappointed with this book. Having said that, I agree with all the reviews written about this highly acclaimed work stating, for example, that Gilead is a beautiful work – demanding, grave and lucid… Robinson’s words have a spiritual force that’s very rare in contemporary fiction - The New York Times Book Review.

So serenely beautiful, and written in a prose so gravely measured and thoughtful, that one feels touched with grace just to read it…A triumph of tone and imagination [and ...more

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Dec 07, 2008 Sandi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009, literature, pulitzer-prize-winners

Forget your theology books and forget your "Christian Fiction". If you really want to get inside the head of someone with a deep, abiding faith in God, you must read "Gilead". Through the story of Rev. John Ames, Marilynne Robinson eloquently expresses so many of the ideas I have had about Christianity and state some difficult theological concepts in easy to understand words. And, she does it without ever getting cheesy or preachy. Reading this book is like floating in a pool on a warm summer da ...more

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Mar 02, 2015 Jessaka rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: favorite-10-star, pulitzer-prize, no-page-unturned-book-group

"It's your existence I love you for, mainly. Existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined."

This is one of the most beautifully written love letters that I have ever come across. James Ames, a congregational minister has a heart condition and doesn’t believe that he will be living much longer, so he wants his son to know him, so this long love letter.

And when you google quotes on this book, the list is so long that you will realize the wealth of this book, that "It's your existence I love you for, mainly. Existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined."

This is one of the most beautifully written love letters that I have ever come across. James Ames, a congregational minister has a heart condition and doesn’t believe that he will be living much longer, so he wants his son to know him, so this long love letter.

And when you google quotes on this book, the list is so long that you will realize the wealth of this book, that perhaps you should just underline a few quotes and read the book over again and again, and I think aloud that the author had so much in her heart that she poured it all out in this book.

I can offer no more other than to leave you with some quotes. Well, yes I can. If you have not listened to it in audio, you must. It is narrated by Tim Jerome:

“It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance - for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light .... Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it? .... Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a courage that allows us to be brave - that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.”

“I wish I could leave you certain of the images in my mind, because they are so beautiful that I hate to think they will be extinguished when I am. Well, but again, this life has its own mortal loveliness. And memory is not strictly mortal in its nature, either. It is a strange thing, after all, to be able to return to a moment, when it can hardly be said to have any reality at all, even in its passing. A moment is such a slight thing. I mean, that its abiding is a most gracious reprieve.” ...more

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Apr 12, 2015 Maxwell rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: owned

It's not often that I find a book that can hold my attention enough to read it in one day. Gilead is a book that I'm conflicted over having read so speedily, as I couldn't stop reading, while at the same time wanted to savor and absorb more slowly every thought and prayer and beautiful moment it held.

I understand the praise for this book. And I understand when people say that in fifty or one hundred years people will still be reading this book and finding something deeply human in it.

Gilead is ...more

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Jan 02, 2020 Diane rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: stream-of-consciousness

This is one of those highly praised novels that I've been meaning to read for more than a decade, and this holiday break I finally made time for it.

Gilead is told in stream-of-consciousness style, following the thoughts and reflections of the small-town reverend John Ames, who has learned he has a heart condition and doesn't have long to live. John tells his story in the form of a letter to his young son, and the reader hears all kinds of reminsiscences from his long life, and also learns about ...more

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Jun 13, 2011 Jan-Maat added it · review of another edition

Shelves: usa, religion, 21st-century, novel

With race again in the news from the USA (view spoiler) it seems worth while returning to Marilynne Robinson's book because beneath the gentle stream of consciousness ramblings of an elderly preacher who is approaching death, something challenging hides.

Although set in 1956 the narrator's reflections flicker back and forth from the time of his grandfather - a pastor active in the abo With race again in the news from the USA (view spoiler) it seems worth while returning to Marilynne Robinson's book because beneath the gentle stream of consciousness ramblings of an elderly preacher who is approaching death, something challenging hides.

Although set in 1956 the narrator's reflections flicker back and forth from the time of his grandfather - a pastor active in the abolitionist movement and the border violence of the 1850s and the present. Particularly to the problems of his godson and namesake which also involve issues of race and responsibility similar to those which swallowed up his grandfather's life.

However we are not only invited by the author to compare the personal issues faced by these different generations but also to consider they in their broader context as the narrator contrasts the town that he lives in now, decaying and shrinking, abandoned even by the narrator's father and brother, with the period of its optimistic growth and sense of purpose in the 1850s.

Indeed if that wasn't enough the book's title - Gilead is the hill of testimony - is also a call to consider what is being testified.

The town when it was founded had a purpose. It was part of the underground railroad. The Grandfather had a purpose. He fought for an end to slavery. Man and society were engaged in a cause and had a calling.

However the nobility is undercut by the reality. The town's people were accident prone - one escaped slave asks them to leave him alone as he figures he's better off without their help. The grandfather is caught up in a retreat during the civil war and loses his Bible. Probably the message is subtler. A noble cause isn't enough, it isn't easy to accomplish it well even with the best intentions. Or even if your calling is predestined that doesn't mean that God intends the pursuit of it to be easy.

The godson, having avoided military service (and is able to quote chapter and verse in support of why it is better for a coward to avoid war), escaped an earlier relationship and a child born out of wedlock is now in a transgressive inter-racial relationship. The question of whether the town of Gilead can offer him and his love a home is one that is put to the narrator late in the book.

There's testimony to the difficulty of living up to a calling, predestined or not. The narrator's father refuses to have a copy Feuerbach in the house. The narrator has to read it secretly instead. But ultimately the Father abandons Gilead and goes off with his atheist son to California instead. Though I suppose California could be said to be a kind of promised land, it looks like a retreat from the moral high ground. A physical relocation that parallels his spiritual dislocation from the distinctly old testament grandfather.

By the mid 50s the town seems to have failed. It has slunk into some kind of limbo were faith is safe and not a challenge to believers (challenging is possibly one of the milder words that could be used to describe the Grandfather's behaviour). It no longer seems to be worthy of having been called "The Shining Star of Radicalism" as U.S. Grant put it. What we see with the Father and the atheist brother going to California and more particularly the failure of the town, of the state and of the law to reject the socially dominant views on race is the failure of the present to remain true to their original purpose and as a result there conceptions are narrow and ungenerous. The godson with his black wife and mixed race children can find no refuge here.

But all of this are just soft ramblings and different threads of meaning can be teased out of them in between the narrator's reflections on late fatherhood, the approach of death, a lucky marriage, the slight but growing sense of a missed calling and the awkwardness of mistaken judgements. Fear not however, Gilead remains a subtler and more approachable read than you would expect any novel that features a conversation about predestination to have a right to be! ...more

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Aug 05, 2014 Lisa rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: pulitzer

The only positive thing I can say about this book is that it is well-written, from a formal standpoint. I hated the main character, an old whiny preacher who is writing down the story of his life for his young son.

This man incarnates everything I despise about religious blindness and righteousness. Even when the preacher tries to be honest, he always assumes that his absolute truth and morality can't be touched. He ultimately knows everything best, even though he might have made mistakes - some ...more

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Jul 08, 2020 Michael rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020, recs

as often tedious as it is lyrical, which seems intended. the novel’s told from the point of view of a terminally ill, elderly reverend writing a lengthy letter to his young son, in which he drifts from reflections on religion to stories of his past to a diaristic account of his bleak present, in a way that’s associative and impressionistic. Robinson writes prose that trembles with pain and sadness, and so subtly captures generational conflict.

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Oct 09, 2015 Tom LA rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

Although a work of literary fiction, this is one of the best books about God and the Christian Faith that I've ever read. Conceptually, it achieves what some theology books like "The experience of God" by David Bentley Hart do, and then it actually surpasses it, by acknowledging the presumptuousness of anyone who tries to judge anyone else's faith. Let me try to explain.

Gilead (winner of 2005 Pulitzer for fiction) is written as a letter from a 76-year-old Congregationalist Preacher to his seven ...more

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Aug 23, 2015 David rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to David by: Alisa

First of all, I have some disclaiming to do. I do not believe in God, not even in the most hazy, nondenominational sense of an impersonal 'force' that vouchsafes existence. I was raised Catholic (halfheartedly)—by which I mean that I was sent to Catholic school, but my parents were never demonstratively or actively Catholic. They only rarely attended church (precipitated, I think, by a sense of lapsed duty), they never prayed, to my knowledge, and they mostly refrained from any mention of gods o First of all, I have some disclaiming to do. I do not believe in God, not even in the most hazy, nondenominational sense of an impersonal 'force' that vouchsafes existence. I was raised Catholic (halfheartedly)—by which I mean that I was sent to Catholic school, but my parents were never demonstratively or actively Catholic. They only rarely attended church (precipitated, I think, by a sense of lapsed duty), they never prayed, to my knowledge, and they mostly refrained from any mention of gods or spirits or the afterlife. I guess you could say I grew up in an atmosphere of profound religious ambiguity, which gave me the impression, rightly or not, that we were obliged to bow our heads in deference to the religious arts but we surely weren't supposed to take it all too seriously. Religion, in other words, was a palliative ritual—working in much the same way a fairy tale does for a child—to distract us from more austere truths about life and death.

Of course, I was a child then. I never formulated these ideas succinctly, and now I'm only trying to translate an eroding childhood impression that I can still recall from time to time.

Marilynne Robinson's Gilead is told from the perspective of a dying (Protestant) preacher named John Ames who lives in a small town in Iowa named Gilead. He is writing a testament of sorts to his young son, who is six years old and is the product of a marriage to a considerably younger woman. Both Ames' grandfather and father were preachers, but their relationship was fraught with conflicts both personal and ideological. His grandfather was a stern, fire-and-brimstone preacher who viewed war as the most effective means to achieve greater social justice, while his father was a pacifist and a quieter, more restrained man.

Ames and his family live near his lifelong friend, a Presbyterian minister named Boughton, who is also quite old and suffering from poor health. (The book described Ames as a Congregationalist. I'm not very familiar with the various Protestant denominations, but the text led to me to understand that his religion is Calvinist in orientation. I should note here—as further disclaimer—that the Calvinist concept of predestination was greatly disturbing to this impressionable young Catholic boy when he was learning about competing doctrines in school.) Boughton has quite a few grown children, but none of them live in Gilead; his daughter Glory has returned temporarily to care for him as his health falters and—near the beginning of the book—Boughton's prodigal son Jack returns, with his perpetual smirk and his unknown motives.

Ostensibly, Ames is writing this testament—the book Gilead itself—because he expects that he will die long before his son reaches maturity; he intends to explain his past and his views and instill an impression of himself in a boy who will never really know him in any profound sense. Somewhere along the way, however, he gets distracted by Jack's return to Gilead and the all feelings it stirs up in him. Reckoning with Jack Boughton almost becomes a final test for the old man; on the one hand, he recognizes his duties toward Jack, not only as the son of a good friend but also as a child of God, but on the other hand, he's dogged by what he considers his unfair and antagonistic feelings for the young man, which stem from a sordid incident in past.

Although Ames, at the time of his writing, is occasionally troubled by feelings of inadequacy, I think he's what I'd call an exemplary Christian, and I certainly don't mean that it in an ironic or smug way. I could list any number of adjectives that would explain to you what I mean, incidentally speaking—such as that he's calm, patient, well-meaning, learned, questioning, caring, thinking, etc.—but I think all these many qualities and more are the product of one essential striving in John Ames: he is always working at refining, improving, and reconsidering himself. He hasn't become petrified in a state of self-satisfaction or righteousness. Of course, this isn't only a Christian ideal; it's a human ideal. But I think many Christians get confused when it comes to matters of faith. They mistakenly believe that their faith should not entertain doubts—that it should be steadfast and unbending. On the contrary, I think faith only gains value because it endures in the face of doubt. Belief isn't a fixed destination at the end of a spiritual journey; it's a continuous striving—and it's very hard work.

Marilynne Robinson elegantly and tenderly brings John Ames' thoughts—and even more profoundly—his feelings to life in this miraculous little book. I say that it's miraculous because it fosters understanding across seemingly unbridgeable ideological divides and shows us that many of our most essential ideals are often quite similar, regardless of the trappings of dogmatism or sect. And that's all well and good, of course, but Robinson's success here is so unequivocal because John Ames is real and true and resoundingly alive for all of the book's two-hundred-fifty pages...
...more

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Nov 01, 2020 Linda rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, american-fiction

It is refreshing to read about a decent man with a sense of integrity in these troubled times. John Ames, the protagonist of Gilead, is such a man. He is a third-generation Congregationalist minister from Kansas. His first wife and child died in childbirth, and Ames spent most of his adult life as a lonely man dedicated to his congregation, community, and faith. At 67, he met and married Lila, a much younger woman, and they had a son. When his son turned seven, Ames learned that he had little ti ...more

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Feb 26, 2015 Jess ❈Harbinger of Blood-Soaked Rainbows❈ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, book-club-picks, reviewed, favorite-reviews, hard-copy, beautifully-written-words, 3-and-a-half-stars, popsugar-2015, own-read, pulitzers

Read a book that won the Pulitzer Prize.

3.5 stars rounded up

Ok ya'll, this review is gonna get personal. It's the only review I think I can write right now, and this book gives me the perfect platform to do it. If you have a problem with personal reviews, ~~don't read it~~ I don't give a damn.

There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.

This was my book club's selection for May. I've kind of been in a reading slump the past few months and just haven't bee ...more

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About Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson

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Marilynne Summers Robinson (born November 26, 1943) is an American novelist and essayist. Across her writing career, Robinson has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, National Humanities Medal in 2012, and the 2016 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. In 2016, Robinson was named in Time magazine's list of 100 most influential people.[2] Robinson be ...more

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Gilead (4 books)

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Interview with Marilynne Robinson

The Pulitzer winner returns to the small town of Gilead to examine the human condition and the deprived childhood of a minister's wife in her...

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Quotes from Gilead

“This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.” — 1314 likes

“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.” — 352 likes

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