Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.

4/5 rating. 247 pages.

Book #4 of 2023. Read February 4, 2023.

This novel follows a pastor who is at the end of his life and sorry to leave his wife and his child in a hard world. In order to impart some more wisdom on his young son, he decides to leave him some writings; these include some of his history and some advice – beautifully written as an imperfect, yet striving, human being.

The writing is simple, yet beautiful and funny. It is the perfect mix of both and contributed to the story feeling like being told stories from a Midwestern friend. The narrator spent most of his life in Gilead, Iowa (2.5 hrs from where I was born), with some forays into Kansas, so you know he’s gotta be at least alright. 😉

The first half of this book I thought was incredible and would certainly have earned a 5. I think the second half became more morose, and was meant to signify the narrator’s aging. He is absorbed with some difficult people in his life which take up a lot of the space. This is somewhat of a foray away from his original idea of imparting wisdom to his son.

Overall the book was beautiful and I really enjoyed it. I definitely would recommend it to everyone. It has some interesting ideas about religion, the ideas that we focus on as we age, and some thoughts on redemption.

I originally heard Marilynne on The Ezra Klein show and @ezraklein – as well as multiple of his guests – recommended this book, I completely understand why!

Quotes:

“There’s a lot under the surface of life, everyone knows that. A lot of malice and dread and guilt, and so much loneliness, where you wouldn’t really expect to find it, either.”

“I think he regretted that there was nothing more for him to do.”

“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. I feel I am with you now, whatever that can mean,”

“This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.”

“I get much more respect than I deserve.”

“It is hard to understand another time.”

“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.”

“In retrospect, I’m very grateful for whatever reluctance it was that kept me alone until your mother came. Now that I look back, it seems to me 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.”

“I feel sometimes as if I were a child who opens its eyes on the world once and sees amazing things it will never know any names for and then has to close its eyes again. I know this is all better apparition compared to what awaits us, but it is only lovelier for that.”

“Even thoughtful people have lapses of judgment from time to time.”

“One of the pleasures of these days is that I notice them all, minute by minute, and this was a fine one,”

“When things are taking their ordinary course, it is hard to remember what matters. There are so many things you would never think to tell anyone. And I believe they may be the things that mean most to you, and that even your own child would have to know in order to know you well at all.”

“I never dared to ask him what he’d been up to. I couldn’t risk the possibility of knowing things that were worse than my suspicions.”

“I have always liked the phrase ‘nursing a grudge,’ because many people are tender of their resentments, as of the thing nearest their hearts.”

“The story made your mother laugh, though, so my labors are repaid.”

“I conceal my motives from myself pretty effectively sometimes.”

“What to do with all the frustration and regret that builds up in this life?”

“There in the dark and the quiet I felt I could forget all the tedious particulars and just feel the presence of his mortal and immortal being.”

“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 happen to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live.”

“That there should be such a voice in the whole world, and that I should be the one to hear it, seemed to me then and seems to me now an unfathomable grace.”

“Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.”

“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.”

“How could he be there in the midst of it all with that sad and splendid treasure in his heart?”

“There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.”

“- that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.”

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