A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER• OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER• A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • MORE THAN 1 MILLION COPIES SOLD“Quietly powerful [and] moving.” O, The Oprah Magazine (recommended reading)Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award, GILEAD is a hymn of praise and lamentation to the … National Book Critics Circle Award, GILEAD is a hymn of praise and lamentation to the God-haunted existence that Reverend Ames loves passionately, and from which he will soon part.
In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames’s life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He “preached men into the Civil War,” then, at age fifty, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle.
Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father–an ardent pacifist–and his grandfather, whose pistol and bloody shirts, concealed in an army blanket, may be relics from the fight between the abolitionists and those settlers who wanted to vote Kansas into the union as a slave state. And he tells a story of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, which are tested in his tender and strained relationship with his namesake, John Ames Boughton, his best friend’s wayward son.
This is also the tale of another remarkable vision–not a corporeal vision of God but the vision of life as a wondrously strange creation. It tells how wisdom was forged in Ames’s soul during his solitary life, and how history lives through generations, pervasively present even when betrayed and forgotten.
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A beautiful, quiet book.
Start with Housekeeping. These books are memorable, complex, vivid and compelling.
A great book about religious but flawed people dealing w/ the travails of family and friends. A moving display of humanity at its best
It’s the writing! It’s lyrical, beautiful, slow and evocative. Taste each word as you would a perfect meal.
Probably the best novel I have ever read.
One of my all-time favorite stories. Warm, heartfelt, moving.
Wonderful, tender story. I read it over and over.
“For me writing has always felt like praying.”
“Adulthood is a wonderful thing, and brief. You must be sure to enjoy it while it lasts.”
Those touching, powerful quotes are from Minister John Ames, the protagonist of Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Gilead tells his story in letter form to his young son about his life and struggles as a man of the …
The plot is a very simple one: Reverend Ames is an old man who knows he doesn’t long to live, so he’s writing letters to his young son. Within the course of the letters, the reader also learns that Jack Boughton has returned home, the prodigal son of Reverend Ames’s best friend. Ames fills his letters with the beauty of a simple life, well-lived. …
One of the most beautifully written books I have ever read.
Beautiful and thought-provoking. It’s like a novena. You can’t stop reading.
very slow ,introspective narrative…interesting character. I chose this for my book club w/o reading it first….BIG MISTAKE….they’re still teasing me about it 3 years later!
Beautifully written. Marilynne Robinson will not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I find her incredibly earnest and perceptive about human beings in search of a deeper meaning of life. She explores the heartfelt spirituality of her protagonists in a thorough way that will turn some readers off. But if intense books on the subject of God in our lives …
Reading Gilead was like being inside a prayer.
I couldn’t quite figure this book out. It was good enough to win a Pulitzer Prize but I just never really got into it. I had read a book by Wendell Berry before this one called, “Jaber Crow” and I think perhaps I was comparing this book to “Jaber Crow”. I like Wendell Berry’s book better. Read it, maybe I missed something.
One of the best books I’ve read in the past ten years. Beautifully written, thought-provoking. A modern classic.
Marilynne Robinson is a national treasure.
That was a lot of reading for very little enjoyment
One of my all-time favorite novels that takes the reader on an unexpectedly beautiful journey. It’s an interpersonal glimpse into the heart of an old, dying preacher. As he poignantly reminisces about his past, he records it in his journal so his young son will have record of it.
One of the best books I’ve ever read.