Gilead (Oprah's Book Club): A Novel

This book is wonderful, very thoughtful. Beautifully developed characters dealing sensitively in difficult but loving relationship.

I guess I can understand the logic of the Pulitzer committee in handing this book the award; the quality of the writing and religious musings is high in an Iowa Writer's Workshop sort of way (where the author teaches). But as a former philosophy major with a high tolerance for musings, I have to say this epistolary novel stretched my patience. The plot interest doesn't really pick up until the last quarter of the book, and though it ends movingly, I'm not sure I would have plowed through to the end if this had not been a book club assignment. Worth reading, but be ready for a meditative slog without much plot interest to carry you along until about the last 50 pages of the book.

This is a well written story about a senior citizen, preacher, anticipating the end of his life. The setting is a small town in Iowa. The time frame is twentieth century America. The protagonist is looking backward and composing a very lengthy letter to a young son about his life and the history of his family. The story revolves around both history and faith. It is a slow moving novel and not an "action" novel.The novel itself is essentially one very long letter. It is written in first person. The writer is a man of the cloth, who is seventy seven years of age, who has a medical condition and anticipates death. He nonetheless has a very young son. He feels he will die with his son having little or no memory of him.I liked the novel very much. There is a lot of narrative about faith. At times, not always, the story sounds like a sermon in church. This may not appeal the taste of every reader. The story more or less meanders and there is little action.This is the second novel of Marilynne Robinson. The first is "Housekeeping". I read that novel first. I like both novels. They are fairly mature and sophisticated novels. I like this novel more than the first one. However I am glad that I read both of them.In summary I liked this novel very much and have become of a fan of Marilynne Robinson. The story moves slowly and includes a lot of narrative about faith. It may not suit the taste of every reader. In case a reader enjoys Marilynne Robinson, for what it is worth, her writing reminds me somewhat of Joan Didion's "Run River". Thank You...

The strength of voice in GILEAD is rather amazing. The novel is written as a series of meditations penned by the Reverend John Ames, a 76-year old who, fearing death is nigh, wants to leave some words of wisdom for his 7 year-old son. It is quite clear why the book won the Pulitzer; the tenderness of the language is nearly flawless, and although his contemplations are never particularly ground-breaking or revelatory, they brim with the kind of patient wisdom that you'd expect in a dedicated pastor who imagines Heaven to be just around the corner.However, although I can acknowledge the beauty of the novel's prose and poetry, it is hard to recommend it as a book. For one thing, there is virtually no plot whatsoever. There are a few elements that help bind Ames's thoughts together. He has much to say about fathers and sons, obviously. His grandfather (also a pastor) was an eccentric abolitionist who thought war was part of the call to God's grace, while his father (also a pastor) was a pacifist who struggled with his own embrace of the calling. The two did not get along.More troubling to our narrator is the return of his namesake, John Ames Boughton. Born to the narrator's closest friend, a Presbyterian minister referred to as Boughton, the younger John Ames is the novel's prodigal son figure. His "devilment" and penchant for trouble vexes both his father as well as the John Ames after whom he was named. Specifically, our narrator wonders quite a bit about the influence the young Boughton will have on Ames's wife and child when he is finally gone.The themes are as old as the Bible, and Ames doesn't really explore any new ground. He mostly comes to the conclusion that the world is a wonderful place, that you should enjoy every minute of it that you can, and that forgiveness is far greater a blessing for the one who bestows it than for those who receive. Pretty standard stuff for anyone who was raised in the church, as I was.I never felt excited to return to this novel, but I also never read the pages without admiring the skill they displayed. It is very much a novel for the mind, but only a patient and hungry mind. Ames writes that he tries "to write the way I think," and at least a dozen times in the novel he concludes a passage with "this is a remarkable thing to consider" or "I must think more about this." My favorite line was, "I have been thinking about existence lately. In fact, I have been so full of admiration for existence that I have hardly been able to enjoy it properly."This quote sums up what works and what doesn't about the book. Robinson seems to know this and, furthermore, doesn't seem to care, which I also admire. It might not be traditionally entertaining, but it's a real and solid vision. Ames says he's going to stop writing, but then he continues for many more pages. I had to grin, being reminded so well of my childhood when the pastor would finally say, "Let me end with this..." and then go on to speak for ten more minutes. Ames says, "I believe I may have found a way out of the cave of this tedious preoccupation," but his "way out" is more mulling and musing.For those who have the energy, focus, and patience for that sort of thing, there are riches to the book. My favorite moment is when Ames preaches from an old sermon -- reading straight from the paper he wrote it on many, many years earlier. He feels the inadequacy of the sermon and the way he is "preaching," while also discussing the content, which compares rationalism and irrationalism to materialism and idolatry. All this, while the young Boughton sits in the congregation with a false smile on his face. A literary major could eat the layers of this stuff up.It doesn't make for very good story-telling, though. As beautiful as the world's minutiae might be, there's an inherent tedium and laziness to making this philosophy and hope the centering force of a book on preaching, familial obligations, death, and God. I saw, heard, and smelled every moment of the book with stunning clarity, but I closed the novel feeling as if I'd just listened to a pastor preach to the choir.

I am so glad that I met an Irish friend who encouraged me to read this book. I am even more grateful to have met John Ames and to have experienced the humility, grace and wisdom of his innermost reflections

I am thankful for this book. I loved the pace it establishes for us to get to know the life of a man and his people. I am in awe at the surprises the author weaved. An extraordinary talented person wrote this story.

me ha gustado el precio y la rapida entrega

This is a reflexive book about faith, life, choices... everything in a good story that you can't stop reading! Amazing!

A great piece of work penned down by Marilnne Robinson. This book is a delightful read and i breezed through pages and chapters.It was gift and what a gift it turned out to be. I have recommended this book to my friends and families. Gilead, a book about fathers and sons, where Housekeeping was a book about girls and women, and fragmentary where one of Housekeeping's achievements was its fluid narrative completeness, takes an opposing narratorial position with a protagonist whose insider credentials could not be stronger.It reads like something written in a gone time. So much so that when Ames's child draws Messerschmitts and Spitfires, it is actually shocking. This is part of its purpose, to be a conscious narration to the future from someone whose time was different and is over. "I believe I'll make an experiment with candour here," Ames says in letters which will eventually reveal his own opacity, as Robinson discreetly disrupts the monology.A book about the damaged heart of America, it is part vibrant and part timeworn, a slow burn of a read with its "crepuscular" narrator, its repetitions, its careful languidity.