Gilead (Oprah's Book Club)

Description: As the Reverend John Ames approaches the hour of his own death, he writes a letter to his son chronicling three previous generations of his family, a story that stretches back to the Civil War and reveals uncomfortable family secrets.

Brief description: Marilynne Robinson is the author of Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Home (2008), winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Lila (2014), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Jack (2020), a New York Times bestseller. Her first novel, Housekeeping (1980), won the PEN/Hemingway Award. Robinson's nonfiction books include The Givenness of Things (2015), When I Was a Child I Read Books (2012), Absence of Mind (2010), The Death of Adam (1998), and Mother Country (1989). She is the recipient of a 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, for "her grace and intelligence in writing." Robinson lives in California

Review Quotes:

"Gilead is a beautiful work--demanding, grave and lucid . . . Robinson's words have a spiritual force that's very rare in contemporary fiction." --James Wood, The New York Times Book Review

"Robinson's 1981 debut, Housekeeping, was a perfect novel if ever there was one, and her long-awaited second novel proves just as captivating . . . Robinson's prose is lovely and wonderfully precise . . . Gilead is a gentle journey that will be even better the second time you read it." --Jeremy Jackson, People

"[Gilead] is so serenely beautiful, and written in a prose so gravely measured and thoughtful, that one feels touched with grace just to read it. Gilead possesses the quiet ineluctable perfection of Flaubert's A Simple Heart as well as the moral and emotional complexity of Robert Frost's deepest poetry . . . Immensely moving." --Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World

"A major work." --Philip Connors, Newsday

"A beautifully rendered story . . . full of penetrating intellect and artful prose . . . that captures the splendors and pitfalls of being alive . . . The world could use . . . more novels this wise and radiant." --Kathryn Schwille, The Charlotte Observer

"Compelling . . . Brilliant." --Martin Northway, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"There is a lot of pleasure to be had in the novel's probing, thoughtful narrative voice." --Matt Murray, The Wall Street Journal

"Magnificent . . . A psalm worthy of study, a sermon of the loveliest profundity . . . [A] literary miracle . . . 'A'." --Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly

"A Great American Novel." --Time Out New York

"Robinson's long-awaited second novel is an almost otherwordly book-and reveals Robinson as a somewhat otherwordly figure herself . . . A work of enormous integrity . . . Original and strong . . . A beautiful book of ideas." --Mona Simpson, The Atlantic Monthly

"The mature and thoughtful work of a superb and thoughtful storyteller." --Ellen Emry Heltzel, St. Petersburg Times

"An inspired work from a writer whose sensibility seems steeped in holy fire." --Lisa Shea, Elle

"The wait since 1981 and Housekeeping is over. Robinson returns with a second novel that, however quiet in tone and however delicate of step, will do no less than tell the story of America--and break your heart . . . Robinson has composed, with its cascading perfections of symbols, a novel as big as a nation, as quiet as thought, and moving as prayer. Matchless and towering." --Kirkus, starred review

"The long wait has been worth it . . . Robinson's prose is beautiful, shimmering and precise . . . Destined to become her second classic." --Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Quietly powerful [and] moving." --O, The Oprah Magazine (recommended reading)

"I found myself reading slowly, then more slowly-this is not a novel to be hurried through, for every sentence is a delight." --Doris Lessing on Housekeeping

"Housekeeping is a haunting dream of a story told in a language as sharp and clear as light and air and water." --Walker Percy on Housekeeping

"The richness and variety and the peculiarity of tone Marilynne Robinson sustains are masterful." --Mary Gordon on Housekeeping

"Housekeeping is a resounding achievement." --Chicago Tribune on Housekeeping

"Housekeeping brilliantly portrays the impermanence of all things." --Time on Housekeeping

"Stunningly moving . . . Dazzling." --People on Housekeeping