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Loading... Gilead (2004)by Marilynne Robinson
  
» 43 more Historical Fiction (38) Female Author (118) Books Read in 2016 (421) Favourite Books (462) Top Five Books of 2014 (334) Top Five Books of 2016 (226) Top Five Books of 2015 (678) Best family sagas (81) To Read (20) Five star books (182) Unread books (347) BBC Radio 4 Bookclub (56) Books Set in Iowa (23) 2000s decade (28) 100 New Classics (95) All Iowa Reads (4) Fathers in Fiction (15) Couldn't Finish It (78)  kephradyx | Jun 20, 2017 |  Gilead is a masterpiece. Such beautiful writing you are fortunate to read perhaps once in 15 years. Marilynne Robinson wrote Housekeeping in 1980, then went without writing another book for another decade before stunning us with the luminous Gilead in 2004. She was slightly faster with her latest book, Home - a sort of sequel to Gilead, which was published last year. What makes Gilead such a modern classic? Marilynne Robinson doesn't just write, she makes prose seem the noblest desire of man. She touches each word with the brush of a poem, and laces each page with such wisdom that you realize even as you turn the page that you are not just reading but meditating. At the end of his long and eventful life, Reverend John Ames, begins writing a series of letters to his six-year old son. Those letters are meant to be Ames' memories to his son, who he knows will never know his father well. Ames though is not like me, sick of the decay in life, but in love with the grandeur of life: So often I have seen the dawn come and the light flood over the land and everything turn radiant at once, that word 'good' so profoundly affirmed in my soul that I am amazed I should be allowed to witness such a thing. Ames has lived a life of grace, and before he leaves he needs to find it within himself to make room for one who he had scorned earlier in life - Jack, the son of his oldest and dearest friend. How Ames moves through own personal turmoil and reaches grace forms the crux of the novel. It is a novel that is a prayer. It is a novel that isn't a novel at all. It is just a wise prayer on Life from one of the finest prose writers of this generation. Light is constant, we just turn over in it. So every day is in fact the selfsame evening and morning. (  )1  Soulmuser | May 30, 2017 | Since its publication, this novel has been steadily recommended to me and I had made several attempts. In fact, I think I have taken this book out of the library more times than any other. I've taken it out of the library, renewed and racked up fines and then returned it, unread. After one more failed attempt (fifty pages farther than previous go's-at-it), I had to return the book to the library one more time. But I had a free audio-book coming my way (via-Audible) and thought I'd give it another try. My slowness in reading this is not because I couldn't tell it was good. You can pick a page at random and the prose is good, deep and engaging. But I am a slow at reading literature. No shortage of appreciation on my side, fiction just demands more of me. Non-fiction requires only attention to detail and the ability to follow an argument. Fiction means entering the world the author has constructed. It demands your whole being. You find some books when your ready (or from persistence). While I acknowledge the superiority of the written word, Tim Jerome's narration thoroughly engaged me and I found myself transfixed by the word's of John Ames as he records his last days and remembrances for his son. The themes of the novel: fathers & sons, doubt and faith, forgiveness and blessing washed over me. Because I listened to this book on audio, I hit the denouement of the novel while waiting to pick up my kids and walk them home from school. Tethered to my device I had the awkward sensation of being privately emotive in a public place. Having made the journey once, I definitely want to read this again. ( ) Jamichuk | May 22, 2017 | A wonderful mystical read that spans generations of fathers and sons and religion and faith and family and perhaps most of all - human frailty. Marilynne Robinson's book of a elderly father writing letters to his young son captures the poignancy of the human condition, and the struggles of faith, loneliness, family, honor and friendship that all men cope with. Brilliant, thoughtful, sad and ultimately uplifting. ( ) bhuesers | Mar 29, 2017 | Very well-written, very rich and subtle and complex; not Christian fiction but not for those who immediately start gnashing their teeth about American Christianity. ( ) sirk.bronstad | Feb 16, 2017 |
Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 031242440X, Paperback)In 1981, Marilynne Robinson wrote Housekeeping, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and became a modern classic. Since then, she has written two pieces of nonfiction: Mother Country and The Death of Adam. With Gilead, we have, at last, another work of fiction. As with The Great Fire, Shirley Hazzards's return, 22 years after The Transit of Venus, it was worth the long wait. Books such as these take time, and thought, and a certain kind of genius. There are no invidious comparisons to be made. Robinson's books are unalike in every way but one: the same incisive thought and careful prose illuminate both.The narrator, John Ames, is 76, a preacher who has lived almost all of his life in Gilead, Iowa. He is writing a letter to his almost seven-year-old son, the blessing of his second marriage. It is a summing-up, an apologia, a consideration of his life. Robinson takes the story away from being simply the reminiscences of one man and moves it into the realm of a meditation on fathers and children, particularly sons, on faith, and on the imperfectability of man. The reason for the letter is Ames's failing health. He wants to leave an account of himself for this son who will never really know him. His greatest regret is that he hasn't much to leave them, in worldly terms. "Your mother told you I'm writing your begats, and you seemed very pleased with the idea. Well, then. What should I record for you?" In the course of the narrative, John Ames records himself, inside and out, in a meditative style. Robinson's prose asks the reader to slow down to the pace of an old man in Gilead, Iowa, in 1956. Ames writes of his father and grandfather, estranged over his grandfather's departure for Kansas to march for abolition and his father's lifelong pacifism. The tension between them, their love for each other and their inability to bridge the chasm of their beliefs is a constant source of rumination for John Ames. Fathers and sons. The other constant in the book is Ames's friendship since childhood with "old Boughton," a Presbyterian minister. Boughton, father of many children, favors his son, named John Ames Boughton, above all others. Ames must constantly monitor his tendency to be envious of Boughton's bounteous family; his first wife died in childbirth and the baby died almost immediately after her. Jack Boughton is a ne'er-do-well, Ames knows it and strives to love him as he knows he should. Jack arrives in Gilead after a long absence, full of charm and mischief, causing Ames to wonder what influence he might have on Ames's young wife and son when Ames dies. These are the things that Ames tells his son about: his ancestors, the nature of love and friendship, the part that faith and prayer play in every life and an awareness of one's own culpability. There is also reconciliation without resignation, self-awareness without deprecation, abundant good humor, philosophical queries--Jack asks, "'Do you ever wonder why American Christianity seems to wait for the real thinking to be done elsewhere?'"--and an ongoing sense of childlike wonder at the beauty and variety of God's world. In Marilynne Robinson's hands, there is a balm in Gilead, as the old spiritual tells us. --Valerie Ryan (retrieved from Amazon Thu, 12 Mar 2015 18:03:42 -0400) As the Reverend John Ames approaches the hour of his own death, he writes a letter to his son chronicling three previous generations of his family, a story that stretches back to the Civil War and reveals uncomfortable family secrets. |
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Source: Borrowed from the library - bless 'em for having it. (