Gilead: A Novel
by Marilynne Robinson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Marilynne RobinsonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-01-10
ISBN: 031242440X
Number of pages: 247
Publisher: Picador
Book Reviews of Gilead: A Novel
Book Review: "I sometimes almost forget my purpose in writing this." -- Indeed...
Summary: 1 Stars
Part of the point of being in a book group is being exposed to books you never would have picked up on your own accord. In the best cases, you get wonderful surprises that leave you stunned and happy. In the case of my book group, this has meant some top notch stuff such as Jose Saramago's Blindness or Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, both of which I loved and would never have picked up on my own. Of course, the flip side is that you can spend precious hours of life reading something utterly awful -- and of the 75+ books I've read for my book group, this was undoubtedly the absolute worst.
In it, we meet an old Midwestern preacher, who has decided to write a letter to his young son. And what a rambling, boring, pretentious letter it is. One reviewer pointed out that the letter-as-novel framework is the refuge of a writer bereft of any coherent notion of what to write. It removes troublesome considerations such as characterization, plot, pacing, structure, and resolution from the equation, allowing the writer to more or less free associate. To be sure, Robinson can pen a pretty sentence, but when it's not in the service of anything, who cares?
It's a shame, because there are a few hints of what might have been buried in the Rev. Ames' letter. Of particular interest to me was the potential story of the conflict between his man-of-action abolitionist grandfather and his pacifist father (both preachers themselves) at the time of the Civil War. Unfortunately, moments like these are few and far between, although I'll admit that those more religiously oriented than myself may find the Rev. Ames' rambling musings on humanist theology to be of interest. As for myself, I found the entire book capably summed up by two lines I marked while reading. In the first, the Rev. Ames appears to clearly act as the voice of the author when he writes, "I sometimes almost forget my purpose in writing this." And in the second, the Rev. Ames appears to apologize on the author's behalf by noting that that the most notable lesson from his lifetime of reading is that "some very tedious gentlemen have written books." To which we may add "ladies" -- at least in the case of this book.
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