I have been reading Gilead, Marilynne Robinson’s remarkably beautiful novel about a dying pastor who is writing a series of letters to be left for his young son. The story itself is full of profundity, and the book resounds with the theological themes of repentance, forgiveness, grace, and love. But perhaps more important than any of those things, in my reading, I was stunned again and again by the sheer beauty of the writing—a phrase polished and turned like a fine gem, a conversational exchange that was pitch perfect, an image that reached across boundaries to connect separate worlds.
