Gilead
A Novel
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On Sale:
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28/10/2004
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Formats:
Hardback
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A NOVEL THAT READERS and critics have been eagerly anticipating for over a decade, Gilead is an astonishingly imagined story of remarkable lives. John Ames is a preacher, the son of a preacher and the grandson (both maternal and paternal) of preachers. It’s 1956 in Gilead, Iowa, towards the end of the Reverend Ames’s life, and he is absorbed in recording his family’s story, a legacy for the young son he will never see grow up. Haunted by his grandfather’s presence, John tells of the rift between his grandfather and his father: the elder, an angry visionary who fought for the abolitionist cause, and his son, an ardent pacifist. He is troubled, too, by his prodigal namesake, Jack (John Ames) Boughton, his best friend’s lost son who returns to Gilead searching for forgiveness and redemption. Told in John Ames’s joyous, rambling voice that finds beauty, humour and truth in the smallest of life’s details, Gilead is a song of celebration and acceptance of the best and the worst the world has to offer. At its heart is a tale of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, pitch-perfect in style and story, set to dazzle critics and readers alike.
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Author Extras
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Awards for Gilead |
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National Book Critics Circle
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National Book Critics Circle
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Pulitzer Prize
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Critical Praise for
Gilead
"Full of suspense and storytelling... Gilead is a fearless novel."
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The Globe and Mail
"... With Robinson you get the sense that she is writing both for our time and beyond it. ... Above all, Gilead is a novel about love."
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The Vancouver Sun
"Robinson's prose is beautiful, shimmering and precise; the revelations are subtle but never muted when they come, and the careful telling carries the breath of suspense… Many writers try to capture life's universals of strength, struggle, joy and forgiveness - but Robinson truly succeeds in what is destined to become her second classic."
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Publishers Weekly
"Gilead... should be lingered over and savoured for the precision of its breathtaking prose, the delights of its images and the quiet insistent demands it makes on our conscience...With Gilead, [Robinson] shows she has lost none of the power and beauty of her work..."
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Ottawa Citizen
"Robinson has constructed a character and a voice so authentic you may feel as if you are reading something private found in a dusty attic... In Gilead, Robinson has managed the difficult task of representing ordinary goodness, and those moments of happiness we all may experience, from the inside"
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Edmonton Journal
"There is a lot of pleasure to be had in the novel's probing, thoughtful narrative voice."
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The Wall Street Journal
". . . Robinson has composed, with its cascading perfection of symbols, a novel as big as a nation, as quiet as thought, and moving as prayer. Matchless and towering."
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Kirkus (starred review)
"Gilead is a lyrical evocation of existential solitude."
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New York Times Magazine
"There is a ton of kindness in Gilead, some sadness and even more forgiveness... Beautiful."
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Winnipeg Free Press
"Quietly powerful [and] moving."
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O, The Oprah Magazine (recommended reading)
"Gilead is a beautiful work—demanding, grave and lucid... Robinson's words have a spiritual force that's very rare in contemporary fiction."
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The New York Times Book Review
"So serenely beautiful, and written in a prose so gravely measured and thoughtful, that one feels touched with grace just to read it."
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The Washington Post Book World
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When I Was a Child I Read Books
Since the 1981 publication of Marilynne Robinson’s novel Housekeeping —a stunning debut that was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize—she has built a reputation not only as a writer of sharp, subtly moving prose, but also as a rigorous thinker and incisive essayist. Her compelling and demanding...
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Home
In 1980, Marilynne Robinson drew the devotion of readers with her debut novel, Housekeeping , a book that won the PEN/Hemingway Award and has become a modern classic. In 2004, her second novel, Gilead , was published to critical acclaim and won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the...
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