Review: “Gilead” by Marilynne Robinson

This was the third selection for the book club Justine and I participate in, you can read about our first meeting for the book Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walters here.  This is the first book club we’ve ever participated in and it’s something I look forward to every.single.month!!  Our next book is Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn which I’ve heard nothing but amazing things about, can’t wait to start this one!

So it feels super, super silly to review a Pulitzer prize winning novel.  What can I say about this book that would really change its legacy?  So treat this “review” just like a novice opinion, because that’s what it is!

Here’s the synopsis from its Goodreads page:

Twenty-four years after her first novel, Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson returns with an intimate tale of three generations from the Civil War to the twentieth century: a story about fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America’s heart. Writing in the tradition of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Marilynne Robinson’s beautiful, spare, and spiritual prose allows “even the faithless reader to feel the possibility of transcendent order” (Slate). In the luminous and unforgettable voice of Congregationalist minister John Ames, Gilead reveals the human condition and the often unbearable beauty of an ordinary life.

When I googled Gilead there’s a lot of beautiful art for the church in this fiction small town in Iowa:

This book had so many beautiful moments framed so well by Robinson’s really beautiful writing:

That’s a quote that I couldn’t help but Instagram and share because I had to stop and read it several times to let it sink in.

So the best way I can recommend this book is to let you know what you’re getting into.  This isn’t a quick, in-a-day read.  This is a month-long, take it in slowly, soak-up-each-word type of novel.  There are no chapter breaks so it’s not a fly-by read.   Take several afternoons with a cup of coffee and no distractions to take in this book.

It’s a book whose beauty is almost 100% in the nuances.  While this book is altogether literal, the only figurative aspects are metaphors and similes, it’s still about what’s “underneath the surface of the lake” as my English teacher would say.

This goes on the shelf along with The Road by Cormac McCarthy as books about fatherhood that really do capture the importance and beauty of being a patriarch.  I want to start a little package of books that I give to my guy friends when they become dads.

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