Reading Report: Gilead

I've just finished reading Marilynne Robinson's Gilead (2004), the second book club selection for this year. We nearly chose it last year, and when someone brought it up again I (and apparently others as well) voted for its inclusion on the list, even though I had some concerns about the subject matter, but more of that later. I don't know what changed other minds, but mine was changed by reading Barack Obama's interview with Robinson in the NYRB. I was struck (as many were) by Obama's respect for Robinson and her writing, and by some of the profound observations in that interview.

The book was not easy for me to read. It made me think a great deal about life, family, religion, belief (not necessarily the same thing), love, and mortality. The story of a man in his seventies thinking about mortality is a little closer to home than it once was. But the style and technique of the book are remarkable. Robinson imagines the thoughtful ruminations of John Ames, a man afflicted with a failing heart who knows he is dying, a preacher,  the son and grandson of preachers, who is putting his thoughts down on paper for a son born to him late in life who he knows he will not see grow to manhood. The book's story is saved from the tedium that might well result from such an enterprise by the arrival of John Ames (Jack) Boughton, Ames's namesake and the wayward son of his oldest friend and fellow minister the Rev. Robert Boughton.

I'm still processing my thoughts about this book, and trying to decide whether or not to read the companion novel, Home (2008), which tells the story from the point of view of the Boughton family. But my immediate reactions upon completing the book were positive. I was struck with the complexity of Ames's thoughts about his religious faith and his role as a minister, particularly the difficulties he has living his beliefs in light of his own feelings and experiences. The book is set in a small community in Iowa during 1950s and looks back to the period just prior to and after the Civil War, a time when Ames's grandfather was active in the abolitionist movement in Kansas. The historical references help complicate the family history and the application of Ames's theology.

I am looking forward to our discussion of this one, and if I read more of Robinson's novels, perhaps I will have more to say.