Saralee Says
I loved this book. Do not wait for the paperback. Gilead (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) is sure to make the top of the list of book clubs everywhere. It has taken Marilynne Robinson more than 20 years to write another novel but it was well worth the wait. Housekeeping, Robinson’s previous novel that was published in 1980 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), is about the relationship between two sisters and their other female relatives and is called a “modern classic.”
Gilead is about relationships, this time as told from the viewpoint of a father who does not think he has long to live. If you thought you were going to die soon would you take the time to write the story of your life? If so, how much would you want to share with your family and friends? Would you tell the truth, warts and all, or would you try to glamorize your ancestors and yourself and justify any of your mistakes? These are the questions that the main character in Gilead, the Rev. John Ames, must answer.
In the beginning of the book we learn that the year is 1956 and Ames, born in 1880, is the minister for a church in Gilead, Iowa. His father and grandfather were also ministers. Ames married at a young age, and he and his wife had a daughter who died as an infant. His wife also died, and for many years Ames led the life of a widower while going about his duties as a minister. His best friend is also a minister and names his troubled son after Ames.
One Sunday a young woman attends Ames’ church, and he is so smitten he can hardly preach. To Ames’ joyful surprise, she proposes to him, and together they have a son. It is to this boy that Ames is narrating the story of his life. He is a compelling storyteller, and I was mesmerized with the skill in which the author weaves the Ames story into the historical events of the abolitionist movement in Iowa and Kansas. Robinson manages to make the everyday life of a small town minister absorbing. After reading Gilead, I understand why there is a waiting list to enroll in the author’s classes at the prestigious University of Iowa Writer’s Program.
Larry’s Language
The words in Gilead are careful, measured, precise and striking. But author Robinson writes sentences, not stories, so the book reads almost like a hymn or a last will and testament rather than a novel. The Rev. Ames, who is writing this as a letter or journal for his young son, seems strangely passive, especially since he believes he has very little time left to live.
Ames confronts his mortality; examines the morality of his best friend’s son, Jack Boughton; and examines the community’s reaction to that young man’s interracial marriage in the 1950s. The author clearly intends this book to be an exploration of the relationships between fathers and sons as she narrates in crystal clear prose the travels of Ames’ grandfather, also a preacher, who helped start the Civil War in Bloody Kansas in the 1850s, as well as the pacifist reaction of Ames’ father.
This book reads like a good conversation you would have with your best friend or a worthy opponent, but for all its wonderful literary references and philosophical insights, it lacks the kind of personal or emotional connection necessary to engage and sustain my interest. Reading Gilead is like overhearing someone else’s conversation. Bits and pieces are absorbing and interesting, but overall there is not a beginning, middle and end that relate to my life or concerns.
There could be a real book embedded in this novel and struggling to get out. Ames and his father searched across Kansas under death-threatening conditions for the unknown gravesite of a grandfather who preached men into war but produced a son who did not believe in violence. Some readers would love that book. Others, like my lovely wife Saralee will praise Gilead.
Join us for our next book club discussion, which will discuss books by and about African-Americans in honor of Black History Month.
