Relentless. Page-turning. Plot-driven. That describes my previous experience with the latest fiction—the best-seller kind of stuff that you hear about and see everywhere. I wanted to try something different to find out if today's writers had anything worth reading. I found it in Gilead.
It is thoughtful and meandering. Forgiveness. Grace. Doubt. Belief. These themes are explored throughout. This book is not meant to be taken in quickly. It encourages pauses. Sentences need to be reread. New perspectives need to be pondered. The simple things of life become profound. The prose is rich and requires a little wrestling: “There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world's mortal insufficiency to us.”
I think I will have to read Marilynne Robinson's Gilead again.
Comments
I just read this, partly based on your recommendation. :)
Posted by: Tara on Tuesday, October 23, 2007
...and it took her two hours to recover. Thanks a lot!
Posted by: Jeremy Stein on Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Just finished Home.
Posted by: tara on Thursday, September 25, 2008
I assume it wasn't as good as Gilead. Would you recommend it?
Posted by: CJ on Monday, September 29, 2008
I felt skeptical for the first few pages but she drew me in with this one nearly to the same extent as the first. I came away with that blinking-in-the-sunlight feeling, as though I had been thinking about something for a long, long time. It was a bit darker and more despairing than Gilead. I almost wished I had read Home first. Sometimes these "parallel universe" books can be hokey but I think this mostly escaped that.
I guess that's more a recommendation than not!
Posted by: tara on Monday, September 29, 2008
You have certainly convinced me to read it.
Posted by: CJ on Tuesday, September 30, 2008