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Marilynne Robinson's novel, Gilead, is an ode to a simpler, more biblically-directed time, a era before wide-screen tv, when porch-sitting & church suppers were considered an important part of community life, particularly in smaller Midwestern towns like the one in Iowa were the book is set. I kept thinking of that famously rustic Grant Wood painting or some of the equally bleak painted images by Thomas Hart Benton.


I had the feeling with this book, as I did with Home, a later novel by Robinson but one I read & enjoyed prior to Gilead, that theological fine points are less important than the manner in which people & especially families sometimes use a particular strand of religious thought to define themselves.

It isn't that the Bible or the interpretations of it within various religious traditions are less than important but rather that the denomination itself often seems sufficient to frame one's identity, being a Methodist vs. a Presbyterian or even a Free Church Methodist vs. another subset of the Methodists, with the actual resident theology seemingly quite subordinated.

In this novel, protest can occur in the form of attending another church in the same town, for example going to a Quaker meeting instead of one's usual Sunday service. And when young John Boughton smiles or grins during a sermon, it is mentioned that he'd have been better off at a Presbyterian service, where presumably such behavior is more tolerated.

Today, many seem to paint their belief system with a much broader brush, often declaring that they are "spiritual but not religious." And seldom do we hear references to specific passages or characters from the Bible, rather than those taken from films or from television.



One memorable character is the Rev. John Ames, an elderly Congregational pastor in a small Iowa town that seems to be withering in mid-1950s America, well beyond developing freeways & longed-for modernity, a man who reflects on earlier times, recalling his father & grandfather, ministers as well but with rather different & even conflicting visions. The author's characters somehow manage to blend clarity with ambiguity, doubt with hope.

One such moment occurs when the John Ames, a stodgy widower asks a much younger member of of his community how he could possibly repay her for the assistance in his garden & around the house. At this point, she responds, "You ought to marry me". And so, just like that, he did.

Marilynne Robinson evokes time & place so very well, with the language hearkening back to an earlier day when people declared that certain behavior "was not seemly", or that someone was "a great comfort to his father & mother",or that they planned "to pay a call" to a neighbor.

And in this novel words such as grace & mercy do not seem quaint or affected. Instead, this is a richly textured book where every word seems to count & which may not appeal to those with the inability to slow down & to attempt to comprehend the pace of the time that is reflected within the story. There are many extraordinary passages, including:

I have wandered to the limits of my understanding any number of times, out into that desolation, that Horeb, that Kansas, and I've scared myself too, leaving all landmarks behind me, or so it seemed. And it has been among the true pleasures of my life. Night & light, silence & difficulty, it seemed to me always rigorous & good. Well, I am distracted now and my present bewilderments are a new territory that make me doubt that I have ever been lost before.

With this poetic imagery, I was reminded of Robert Frost's poem about scaring oneself with one's own desert places.

What I enjoyed most is the manner in which Gilead is rich in memorable images, such as when a father offers his son a charred piece of bread beside a fire-ravaged Baptist church, struck by lightening, a sort of primitive communion ritual.

My father brought me some biscuit that had soot on it from his hands. Never mind, he said. There's nothing cleaner than ash. But it affected the taste of that biscuit, which I thought might resemble the bread of affliction, which was often mentioned in those days, though it's rather forgotten now.

Often, we manage to live just beyond the margins of true understanding, no matter how much time we spend in the midst of each other but this novel also offers a portrait of folks who continue to reach out to one another, even within a rather bleak landscape where "remembering & forgiving can be contrary things."

*Images within my review are of the author, Marilynne Robinson; the 2nd image together with President Barack Obama + an Iowa church in need of paint. **Novel reread, April 2023.