Book Review: Gilead

Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer prize winning novel, Gilead, was recommended by my virtual friend (i.e., blogging friend) Lucy. I must admit that the very title itself seduced me because it brought to mind the old spiritual, "A Balm in Gilead." The title was apt because the book, although intellectual, rather than plot-driven, is comforting to the soul. I think, for me, the great appeal in this novel was the opportunity to explore the relationships between fathers and sons and to glean the spiritual wisdom which the narrator has culled over many years of isolation.

The Reverend John Ames is a minister in Gilead, Iowa, following in the footsteps of both his father and grandfather. At age 76, he is setting down his life and thoughts for his seven year old son. Although he was married briefly in his younger days, his wife and infant daughter died. He considers it a miracle that he met and married a much younger woman and was given the gift of a beloved son.

He outlines the difficulties between his abolitionist grandfather, his pacifist father, and his atheist brother. He also discusses his friendship with a fellow pastor, Old Boughton. Boughton names one of his sons after John Ames. This son, whom they refer to as Jack, is another wayward soul, creating more drama and friction.

There were so many passages which spoke to me. I have mentioned before that I feel as if I am in a wilderness experience, of sorts. This concept, and the benefit of such an experience, came up repeatedly in the novel.

The narrator spends some time discussing many long years of isolation and loneliness after the death of his wife and daughter. He talks about how much of that time was spent in reading and writing. He says, "For me writing has always felt like praying, even when I wasn't writing prayers, as I was often enough. You feel that you are with someone."

Then he talks of the many sermons he has written out and stored: "That's sixty-seven thousand five hundred pages.... That's amazing. I wrote almost all of it in the deepest hope and conviction. Sifting my thoughts and choosing my words. Trying to say what was true. And I'll tell you frankly, that was wonderful. I'm grateful for all those dark years, even though in retrospect they seem like a long, bitter prayer that was answered finally."

And later, he adds, "Now that I look back, it seems to me that in all that deep darkness a miracle was preparing. So I am right to remember it as a blessed time, and myself as waiting in confidence, even if I had no idea what I was waiting for."

He also emphasizes how nothing is all good or all bad. I felt encouraged to find the blessing in the midst of adversity. Of his life, he says, "The worst misfortune isn't only misfortune."

When speaking of the Boughtons, he says, "But good fortune is not only good fortune, and over the years things happened in that family that caused some terrible regret."

Discussing a sermon on Hagar and Ishmael and God's provision for them, Ames remarks, "That is how life goes - we send our children into the wilderness. Some of them on the day they are born, it seems, for all the help we can give them. Some of them seem to be a kind of wilderness unto themselves. But there must be angels there, too, and springs of water. Even that wilderness, the very habitation of jackals, is the Lord's. I need to bear this in mind."

In another comment on Abraham he says, "any father, particularly an old father, must finally give his child up to the wilderness and trust to the providence of God. It seems almost a cruelty for one generation to beget another when parents can secure so little for their children, so little safety, even in the best circumstances. Great faith is required to give the child up, trusting God to honor the parents' love for him by assuring that there will indeed be angels in that wilderness."

Moreover, he addresses another issue I have struggled with - the difficulty of forgiving an offense against one's child. Ames records, "He could knock me down the stairs and I would have worked out the theology for forgiving him before I reached the bottom. But if he harmed you in the slightest way, I'm afraid theology would fail me."

Through it all, the novel inspired me to hope, to cling to faith in the darkness, to offer others the benefit of the doubt, and to place my own children firmly in the only hands capable of truly carrying them. Marilynne Robinson has a superb gift for both eloquent prose and a solid voice. I will eagerly seek out her third novel, entitled Home, because it covers the lives of the Boughton family during this same time.