"Gilead": reflections on faith, race and family

Nine members of the book group met in Infinity Garden in July to discuss Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Patrick introduced the book by describing her as “probably the most distinguished and decorated author you’ve never heard of”, with awards including the Pulitzer Prize, the Orange Prize, the National Humanities Medal, the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction and others. She was born in Idaho in 1943 and worked for many years at the University of Iowa ending as Professor of English and Creative Writing.

Gilead, her second novel, was published in 2004. It reads as a stream-of-consciousness journal or letter written (in 1956) by John Ames, a pastor terminally ill with heart disease, for his son who is only six at the time. It covers events and people in his life, apparently rambling in time and place but in fact carefully constructed so that we gradually learn his and his family’s history. Important people include his pastor father, his first wife who died young, his second and much younger wife and their son, his old friend Robert Boughton (also a pastor) and Robert’s son Jack, a major character. For much of the book we perceive Jack as a prodigal, unreliable and potentially dangerous to the family. At the very end we discover that Jack has a long-term but unmarried relationship with a black woman and they have a child. He has been unable to marry her, partly owing to legal and societal barriers but also due to the bitter disapproval of her family. The narrator revises his opinion of Jack, although there is still some lack of warmth and trust between them.

The book powerfully evokes rural America in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. Themes include the inescapably dominant role of religion in that society, and the role of race including the after-effects of slavery (family events go back as far as the American civil war). John and Robert believe themselves to be essentially moral and good men, but we sometimes query if they are as good as they think (or wish to be); for instance, John is consistently critical of Jack and seems unable to allow him any good motivations, until the late denouement. Their discussions touch on predestination but they don’t develop this at any length, and some of our group wanted to explore this notion further. We agreed that it is not always an easy book but it very much repays careful and thoughtful reading.