Gilead : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: A Faith both Supple and Durable
Review:
This novel takes the form of a letter written in 1956 by a dying minister, John Ames, to his seven year old son. His epistle is a graceful rumination on faith, the fraught ties of fathers and sons, and the fleeting glories of the physical world.

If there were more ministers like Ames, there would be less nervousness in the Blue States about the incursions of religious thinking into everyday life. He's wonderfully alive to the beauty of this world, respectful of its complexity, and willing to abide in its mysteries rather than plaster them over with dogma. Ames is big-hearted and tough-minded, and even if you can't relate to his small-town prairie Protestantism, you have to admire his goodness and his intellectual rigor.

The book is a triumph of tone, a kind of hushed, meditative musing that one might engage in while sitting alone in a church at twilight. There is beautiful imagery here, as when Ames, talking about getting up before dawn as a young boy, says, "I remember walking out into the dark and feeling as if the dark were a great cool sea and the houses and the woods were all adrift in it, just about to ease off their moorings." Ames is a close, careful thinker, and his prose forces the reader to slow down to take in the full measure of his thought.

The plot is a quiet accumulation of anecdotes and small incidents. Ames talks about the tension between his grandfather, a fiery abolitionist who fought with John Brown in "Bloody Kansas" before the Civil War and his father, who rebelled against the fierce absolutism of the abolitionist world view by becoming a pacifist. Ames also works hard to feel Christian charity for Jack Boughton, the roguish son of his best friend. But Ames' core beliefs are never at risk here; his struggles are more about his reluctance to leave this life than with the unknowable machinations of his maker.

"It seems to me that when something really ought to be true, it has a very powerful truth, which starts me thinking again about heaven," Ames says at one point. Not a bad explanation for the enduring appeal of religious belief - or fiction for that matter.

Gilead is to be respected, treasured even, for the care and skill that have gone into its making. This is a book that should be passed hand to hand by enthusiasts and it is a book that should endure.



Rating:
Summary: Midnight confessions
Review: I was very drawn into this story. The voice and captivating pace of this narrative brought me into a whole other dimension of experience--as told by this simple, Iowan; this minister at mid century and at the twilight of his years. I had a problem-though-visualizing this 76 year old having such a young son! And I haven't seen anyone here make any remark on this. (The very idea of having an elder female--say giving birth close to aged 50--and having the same non-blinking sense of acceptance would most likely not be the case!) But beyond this minor issue, this is a moving story that convincingly portrays issues between fathers and sons through various periods of American history. I recommend-- along with the equally compelling (and lesser-known), SIMON LAZARUS. Quite a contrast to this-- with an 18 year old's view of his elders, both known and yet to be discovered.

Rating:
Summary: Spiritual Ramblings
Review: At the end of his life, the Congregational minister, John Ames, writes to his 7-year old son on various information that might be useful to him later in life. His writing becomes primarily a future warning to his son concerning a neighbor, Jack Boughton, who has recently returned to Gilead, Kansas. The central theme can be expressed by Jack's question to Rev. Ames: "Do you think some people are intentionally and irretrievably consigned to perdition?" This question can be brought down to earth as: Should Rev. Ames forgive Jack Boughton for committing past sins and having a "mean" character? In the end, the sinner becomes the victim, and Ames forgives and blesses Jack. After all, it is our job to forgive and God's job to judge.

The book touches lightly on some tough questions, being careful never to offend. The style is not too formal and slightly repetitious as if to simulate the style of the elder minister. The imagery is good. This book was easy for me to put down, which means that nothing particularly interesting happens in the book. The book is short, so you won't invest much time in reading it. Overall I'd recommend reading it, but get it from your library.


Rating:
Summary: Worth The Wait
Review: Gilead comes over 20 years after Robinson's modern classic, Housekeeping. Yes, the book is quiet, somber, thoughtful, personal as a prayer and simply beautiful. A worthwhile read in an unsettling time. One the best of 2004.

Rating:
Summary: Essence of Life
Review: Gilead is a leisurely novel that seeks to capture the essence of life--a preacher in his seventies desperately trying to record his own being, person, and history so that his young son will have something to remember him by. John Ames realizes his age, and with the clarity of the dying, trys to impart with this letter the things that he learned from his own father, grandfather, and family. At first the book moves slowly, interposing Ames family history with John's current wonderous observations about his wife and son. It seems as if it will have no coherent plot, but in a way, it does. Woven into John Ames's musings about religion, life, and family is the conflict of his relationship with John Ames Boughton, his best friend's son.
Gilead is so well constructed that despite its slow progression, it is not a slow read.
From the first gentle words to the last, this story will inspire and teach you and bring warmth into the room where you are reading.

Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: Nearly 25 years after HOUSEKEEPING Marilynne Robinson returns triumphantly with another instant classic. Did I say instant? A book like this is such a considerable achievement I have little doubt that Robinson has been working on it steadily and intently for more than two decades, and in any case a book as rich with thoughtfully meditative reflections and exactingly written prose could hardly be described as anything other than deliberative and beautifully, painstakingly wrought.

John Ames is an old man who has spent his life preaching in the prairie flats of Iowa. He decides to explain himself to the young son he has been blessed with late in life, and in so doing explains the very nature of fatherhood, of filial devotion, of the mysteries of life, to the reader. How uncannily this white contemporary woman has managed to imagine her way into the head of an elderly man from long ago!

It is a tale of hardbitten living, of abolitionism, of pacifism, of faith and patience, of America and of our time.

Rating:
Summary: The struggle to forgive
Review: This book fully inspects the problem of forgivness. Robinson writes of the bonds of friendship, of a father's love, of the struggle among and between generations. Threaded through it all are the words of theology and religion that speak to the heart and soul in day to day living. I found it interesting but slow going to read and for me it was only a 3.

Rating:
Summary: A Peaceful Place
Review: This is a peaceful, reverent novel in the form of a letter to his young son by a minister in Kansas.It is like a memoir without the exhaustive retelling of one's entire life.
Reverend John Ames knows that he will soon be dying and he writes to tell his son what he thinks it is important for him to know. The wisdom and gentleness, the reverence for people and nature is breathtaking. His wry humor breaks through any time he threatens to take himself too seriously. This book induces peace!

Rating:
Summary: Feel Good
Review: This is a pretty little book. It will make many readers feel good, and we all know that's important. The author has mixed dollops of literary art and bland, non-threatening Christianity. The result is often nice, albeit repetitive and ultimately tiresome.

Readers in search of the 24-carat, industrial-grade stuff might want to check out the works of (inter alia) Dostoyevsky, Sigrid Undset, Georges Bernanos, Graham Greene, or Flannery O'Connor. For a somewhat lighter touch (but still 24-carat), try Evelyn Waugh or Walker Percy.


Rating:
Summary: Living with It
Review: When Plato learned what Dionysius II had written about his philosophy, he disowned the statements, saying the ruler of Syracuse had never questioned the philosopher himself about his teachings. Plato then added that the only way to learn a man's system of thought is to live alongside him, observing and listening day by day. Hearing a description of ideas is not nearly enough.
In Gilead, Robinson gives us, not Plato and not Jesus Christ, but a man who lives a life of Christian love and forgiveness as second nature. John Ames does not make forgiveness overly easy by pretending everyone is entirely good, but when he meets the caustic type, he is never comfortable with himself until he has found an honest way to forgive that person.
The novel is a series of notes Ames writes in his seventies to his pubescent son, all to be read after his death, which seems imminent. The arrangement is elegantly effective in conveying candor. This is the kind of moment-by-moment honesty that lives only in animals, toddlers, and those men and women who, late in their lives, have become so familiar with both God and human beings that they are comfortable with both while honoring the One and respecting the inherent dignity of the other.
When we have finished this delicious novel, some of us feel we have followed John Ames through his life, learning much in the process, much that is of great value.