I like Pulitzer Prize winning novels. And I like Oprah books. This one is both and I'm not sure whether I did like it or not though I can say for sure that it could have been a tad faster, with a little more pace to it than it had. Granted, the story is supposedly told by an old man who writes to his son. He know he will not be around much longer and the son is still quite little, so he writes to his adult son in about twenty years.
Gilead is the name of the fictional small town in Iowa where the family Ames lives. John is a clergyman as well as his father and his grandfather were and he tells his son the story of their family and their town. It all flows from one event or even non-event into the next.
Given the profession of the protagonist who also functions as the narrator of the whole story, this novel is quite into religion. I am a Christian but not American and I have always felt there is a wide distance between the two beliefs, probably as wide as the ocean that separates us, especially between my Catholic Christianity and that of many American protestant denominations. I can follow a story that is based around religion, I can even read certain religious writings but reading about a whole life of a person who thinks he is better because he believes in the one and only way how to live your life and probably wanting to enforce it onto his son, well, it was a bit much.
The whole book sounded to me like the last sermon this guy was ever going to give and that his son was condemned to follow it letter by letter for the rest of his life.
The book was not what I usually experience with Pulitzer Prize winning novels. It happens rarely but it happens. Unfortunately. We can't always agree with everyone. And apart from the one author who didn't accept the Oprah nomination, I think this is also the first Oprah book I can't warm to.
Marilynne Robinson received the Pulitzer Prize for "Gilead" in 2005.
From the back cover:
"Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award, Gilead is a hymn of praise and lamentation to the God-haunted existence that Reverend Ames loves passionately, and from which he will soon part.
In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He 'preached men into the Civil War,' then, at age fifty, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle.
Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father - an ardent pacifist - and his grandfather, whose pistol and bloody shirts, concealed in an army blanket, may be relics from the fight between the abolitionists and those settlers who wanted to vote Kansas into the union as a slave state. And he tells a story of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, which are tested in his tender and strained relationship with his namesake, John Ames Boughton, his best friend's wayward son.
This is also the tale of another remarkable vision - not a corporeal vision of God but the vision of life as a wondrously strange creation. It tells how wisdom was forged in Ames's soul during his solitary life, and how history lives through generations, pervasively present even when betrayed and forgotten."
One for me to avoid I think, so thanks for that! Coincidently (kind of) I'm reading about the drive for Catholic Emancipation in 19th century Britain which I'm finding very illuminating (if rather complex). You might find it interesting. Review in around 3 weeks.
ReplyDeleteI know. I still might have read it if someone had written a negative review because I would have thought, I like most Oprah books. One of my blogger friends once wrote about "Gilead": "A beautiful book about faith, love, family and forgiveness." I couldn't see much of forgiveness in the book but it probably depends how you look at it.
DeleteAnd yes, your book sounds fascinating. I'm looking forward to your review. What's the title?
I do have a 'problem' with critically acclaimed books - I often find them not very good or acclaimed because they're 'difficult' or 'exclusive'. But then again I have problems with hugely popular books too, so maybe the 'problem' is me! [lol]
DeleteThe book I'm reading presently (should finish it tomorrow) is: The King and the Catholics - The Fight for Rights 1829 by Antonia Fraser. The story is complex and convoluted but really interesting (and well told). I had NO idea that Catholics were so hard done by for so long - or that so many people were opposed so strongly to giving them the same rights as everyone else.
I know what you mean. There are a few lists of highly acclaimed books that I like, Oprah was one of them so far and since this is only the second time I didn't like one, I guess I will find some more from her list that I like but I will be a little more careful in the future.
DeleteThat book sounds interesting. As a Catholic myself, I have heard many of those stories and would be interested to read it. The thing is, people have been fighting over religion as long as religion exists. Look at the Jews and the history of their persecution, that didn't just start in 1933, either.
I finished the book yesterday and it was definitely worth the read. I only found out about the persecution of Catholics here after reading a work about the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 made 'famous' by Guy Fawkes. 'Technically' I'm Catholic too - having been baptised into the faith. Growing up in Liverpool often the first question when meeting someone new was "Protestant or Catholic?" and, depending on your answer, you either got a nod or a smack. What a crazy species we are!
DeleteYou are so right with your last comment. I grew up in a village where most people were Catholic but the WWII refugees were put into areas where the other religion dominated (what a stupid idea), so in our area, the Protestants were the "refuguees". Funnily enough, my best friends were mostly Protestants or Muslims (not many around during my time but I still managed to find one with whom I was friends until her untimely death last year). I have the feeling it gets better as most young people don't care much about religion anymore. And that is definitely better.
DeleteI have definitely noticed that prejudice of all kinds seems to diminish each generation - at least its what I've seen in family and friends. My brother & I tell my mother off (she's 86) about some of her attitudes but my sister's kids don't or maybe even can't think that way. Yes, definitely better.
DeleteIt was funny @ work with a friend of mine. We discovered we both loved classic Sci-Fi so spent a lot of time chatting about it. He's a Muslim from the English Midlands but his family are from Pakistan. Well, a new team member joined from Islamabad in Pakistan. She often joined in with our chats (although not about SF) and asked one day how we knew each other as we'd obviously known each other for a long time (me and the other guy both being in our 50's) and I smiled and told her that we were brothers, followed by a slight pause and me and the guy both burst out laughing.... I had to 'explain' in my own special way that we both shared the vast majority of our DNA and that from a genetic PoV we were almost indistinguishable - hence being brothers!
Brilliant. The story about your "brother". That is absolutely true and I can't understand people who judge others for anything that is different from their own. I grew up in a small village in the North of Germany but still way away from the border and I believe I saw the first real foreigners when I started travelling abroad by myself at the age of 18. But I always imagined people being the same everywhere which is probably something I learned from my parents who grew up in during the war and saw a lot of prejudice in their villages back then.
DeleteI do hope that you are correct and that one day we can all live without prejudice. Imagine!
I've always seen people as just that - people. I've never understood why someone's skin tone, beliefs or where their reproductive organs are (or where they prefer their partners organs to be) makes *any* difference to the fact that they're all just people like me! Obviously you get good people or bad people but there's zero link between that fact and any of the other stuff. I don't think prejudice will ever vanish completely, but the way the demographics of the world is inevitably going it's going to be far easier for people not to be prejudiced than otherwise. It'll take a while but I think we're getting there.
DeleteWell said, Kitten. Of course, some think it's far easier to judge someone for their outside traits than for their inside. I am just the opposite. Be nice and I'm nice to you. That's what makes this world better. But there are always those who want to be "better" than others and put them down.
DeleteAnd I really hope you are right. I doubt I will be alive when the last prejudiced person dies but I really, really hope it will be sooner rather than later.