Gilead
by Marilynne Robinson(2004)
Novelc. 250 pages
“I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I'm old.”
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One great work, every day
by Marilynne Robinson(2004)
“I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I'm old.”
Marilynne Robinson(2004)
John Ames, an aging Congregationalist minister in small-town Iowa, writes a letter to his young son, knowing he will not live to see the boy grow up. Robinson published her first novel in 1980 and then waited twenty-four years for this one. The prose is luminous with attention, with the light falling on ordinary things. Ames writes about his father and grandfather, both ministers; about his friendship with a man whose son he cannot forgive; about grace and mortality. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize. It reads like a prayer, like light falling through old windows. Every sentence blesses what it sees.