Gilead (Virago Press) (Paperback)
$11.59 - Save $2.42 17% off - RRP $14.01 Free shipping worldwide (to United States and
all these other countries) Usually dispatched within 24 hours | |- Also available in...
- CD-Audio $19.38
Short Description for Gilead From the author of Housekeeping, Gilead is the long-hoped- for second novel by one of America's finest writers. Chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the top 6 novels of 2004. 'A beautiful novel: wise, tender and perfectly measured' Sarah Wate
Full description- Publisher: Virago Press Ltd
- Published: 02 February 2006
- Format: Paperback 288 pages
- See: Full bibliographic data
- Categories: Contemporary Fiction
- ISBN 13: 9781844081486 ISBN 10: 1844081486
- Sales rank: 3,860
Other books
Reviews for Gilead
- Top review
uplifting
Gilead is the second novel by American author Marilynne Robinson. It is 1956, in Gilead, Iowa, and John Ames, a seventy-six year-old preacher with heart failure, is writing a letter to his young son. After losing his first wife and daughter in childbirth, he has spent almost fifty years tending his flock, more than forty of them alone, before falling in love with Lila, thirty-five years his junior, and fathering a son. Knowing he will not see him grow up, he tries to tell his son the things he will need to know in life. He tells of the relationship he had with his father and grandfather, also preachers, and of the parting in anger, never reconciled, of his father and grandfather. As he writes, his anxieties for his wife and son's future security are voiced. When his godson and namesake John Ames Boughton (Jake), the prodigal son of his closest friend, returns to Gilead, he also worries about what danger his young family may face from this irresponsible man. Robinson skilfully and slowly builds this story that is occasionally more like a diary or stream of consciousness than a letter. The patient reader is rewarded with a beautiful ending that is bound to bring a tear to the eye. It is no surprise that this novel is the Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Orange Prize for Fiction. I look forward to "Home" which tells the associated story of the Boughtons. Uplifting. by Marianne Vincent

share
tweet