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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
Yes
Ok yeah I can see why this got a Pulitzer. Just a beautiful, 250-page love letter from father to son, but also a heartfelt memoir. Trying to tell your child all you think they need to know about you, your family, the world before your life runs out? A crazy thought. I thought the Christianity of it all would overtake the plot for me but it did not, I liked this a lot once I got into the story and characters.
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book is like... a meal. A good one. You have to read it slowly and savor it, or you'll miss all the goodness in your haste. I think I'm learning more about reading quality over quantity, and this one is definitely quality. It's slow and meandering and very train-of-thought, but you just grow to love the people in it and the world so much more as a result of reading it. John Ames is leaving this world soon, but he wants to make sure everyone knows how good of a world it is, and how much beauty can be found in the little things, like biscuit from an ash-covered hand or the sunrise over the prairie. And he's oh so flawed and oh so aware of it. And then there are the random tidbits of theological goodness thrown in there, just for flavor, that make you remember that our God is a good one and His world is a purposeful one and there are so many reasons to forgive.
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
read this twice in the span of 6 months because I loved it so much. just a moving, beautiful book. definitely some Calvinist digressions that come off as self indulgent on Robinson’s part but in service of displaying Christianity at its best, I think. a good reminder that joy is just as complex, compelling, and worthy of exploration in the literary tradition as pain
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
On page 4, I made a note for the moment I realized how great this book would be, and how much I would love it. The quote that spurred this reaction (the 2nd highlight of 168 total, with the opening lines of the book being highlight #1) was:
I’m always a little surprised to find my eyebrows unsinged after I’ve suffered one of those looks. I will miss them. It seems ridiculous to suppose the dead miss anything. If you’re a grown man when you read this—it is my intention for this letter that you will read it then—I’ll have been gone a long time. I’ll know most of what there is to know about being dead, but I’ll probably keep it to myself. That seems to be the way of things.
Gilead is one long letter written by an elderly father to his young son, in preparation for the former's approaching death and with the knowledge the latter will grow up without a father around. But while that is the framing of the book, the true story and themes of Gilead are much more than that. This book was made for me:
- Emotionally complex father/prodigal-son relationships: Check
- Old person reflecting on their life: Check
- Tenderness, respect, and love for the mess that is this world and humanity: Check
- A religious person living out the tenants of their religion and just generally trying to be a good person: Check
- Fantastically clever writing that was equal parts life-affirming and philosophically/theologically dense: Check
I just loved it. There were definitely times where the theology was too complex for my little atheist brain but I ain't going to punish this book for my own stupidity/ignorance. This book is surprisingly romantic, and so incredibly tender and loving to life. Every part of John Ames life we get was interesting: his father and grandfather, his romance with his wife, his love for his children, his contemplation on death, afterlife, and God, and his struggle with forgiveness and understanding of Jack. I just thought Robinson weaved all of these plots together so beautifully.
I did have a theory about Lila that I will spoil because there are sequels to this so while this did not prove to be true in this book (and in fact I doubt is correct at all), just to be safe:
This book is so full of amazing quotes it should be illegal but here are some of my favorites:
Well, but how deeply I regret any sadness you have suffered and how grateful I am in anticipation of any good you have enjoyed. That is to say, I pray for you.
it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash. I wish I had paid more attention to it. My list of regrets may seem unusual, but who can know that they are, really. This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.
I’d never have believed I’d see a wife of mine doting on a child of mine. It still amazes me every time I think of it. I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you.
but it’s your existence I love you for, mainly. Existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined. I’m about to put on imperishability. In an instant, in the twinkling of an eye.
Any human face is a claim on you, because you can’t help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it.
Our dream of life will end as dreams do end, abruptly and completely, when the sun rises, when the light comes. And we will think, All that fear and all that grief were about nothing. But that cannot be true. I can’t believe we will forget our sorrows altogether. That would mean forgetting that we had lived, humanly speaking.
Remembering my youth makes me aware that I never really had enough of it, it was over before I was done with it...Oh, I will miss the world!
I always imagine divine mercy giving us back to ourselves and letting us laugh at what we became, laugh at the preposterous disguises of crouch and squint and limp and lour we all do put on. I enjoy the hope that when we meet I will not be estranged from you by all the oddnesses life has carved into me.
The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light, just as a candle flame looks beautiful in the light of morning. Light within light. It seems like a metaphor for something...It seems to me to be a metaphor for the human soul, the singular light within the great general light of existence.
The fact is, I don’t want to be old. And I certainly don’t want to be dead. I don’t want to be the tremulous coot you barely remember. I bitterly wish you could know me as a young man...
I wish I could leave you certain of the images in my mind, because they are so beautiful that I hate to think they will be extinguished when I am. Well, but again, this life has its own mortal loveliness. And memory is not strictly mortal in its nature, either. It is a strange thing, after all, to be able to return to a moment, when it can hardly be said to have any reality at all, even in its passing. A moment is such a slight thing, I mean, that its abiding is a most gracious reprieve.
I wished I could sit at the feet of that eternal soul and learn. He did then seem to me the angel of himself, brooding over the mysteries his mortal life describes, the deep things of man. And of course that is exactly what he is. “For who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him?” In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable—which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, untraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us.
I told them, If you want to inform yourselves as to the nature of hell, don’t hold your hand in a candle flame, just ponder the meanest, most desolate place in your soul.
You might wonder about my pastoral discretion, writing this all out. Well, on one hand it is the way I have of considering things. On the other hand, he is a man about whom you may never hear one good word, and I just don’t know another way to let you see the beauty there is in him.
Okay that might be enough (for now...). God I can't wait to reread this book.
Fascinating book in its exploration of family, philosophy, theology, and history.
Gilead is told through the voice of Reverend John Ames, an aging pastor in a small Iowa town, who is writing a letter to his young son as he approaches the end of his life.
I haven’t had much luck with books lately, and this one wasn’t any different. I found it difficult to stay engaged, the flow felt off, making it a struggle to get through.
On top of that, the story is quite sad, and by the end, I felt ... lonely.
I haven’t had much luck with books lately, and this one wasn’t any different. I found it difficult to stay engaged, the flow felt off, making it a struggle to get through.
On top of that, the story is quite sad, and by the end, I felt ... lonely.