Books We Like

 

Gilead
By Marilynne Robinson
Author of Housekeeping

A father is writing his memoirs to his son. He writes about his ministry in the church, and about his father and grandfather, also preachers. Most of the story takes place during The Great Depression and The Dust Bowl, when the earth was dry and parched in their part of the Midwest…Iowa and Kansas. Those were hard times here in America, which was recovering from The Civil War and WWI.

However, the parts of the book most compelling for me were the inner dialogues. The first chapters are hard reading, but the book is worth the effort, for the last hundred pages simply mesmerized me, and by the end of the book I was drying my eyes and wiping my nose.

Marilynne Robinson is truly deserving of this Pulitzer Prize for 2004. She has deep insight into the human condition and sympathy for her characters. They are unforgettable. The trials between the head and the heart will touch every reader in some way.

©2004
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
New York

Reviewed by Claire Rankin Lewis