Gilead

by Marilynne Robinson Narrated by Tim Jerome

Overview

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER¿ OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK ¿ WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION ¿ NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER¿ A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK ¿ MORE THAN 1 MILLION COPIES SOLD

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

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.

Nearly 25 years after Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson returns with an intimate tale of three generations, from the Civil War to the 20th century: a story about fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America's heart. In the words of Kirkus, it is a novel "as big as a nation, as quiet as thought, and moving as prayer. Matchless and towering." GILEAD tells the story of America and will break your heart.

Editorial Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

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. A reverend in tiny Gilead, Iowa, John Ames is 74, and his life is at its best-and at its end. Half a century ago, Ames's first wife died in childbirth, followed by her new baby daughter, and Ames, seemingly destined to live alone, devoted himself to his town, church, and people-until the Pentecost Sunday when a young stranger named Lila walked into the church out of the rain and, from in back, listened to Ames's sermon, then returned each Sunday after. The two married-Ames was 67-had a son, and life began all over again. But not for long. In the novel's present (mid-1950s), Ames is suffering from the heart trouble that will soon bring his death. And so he embarks upon the writing of a long diary, or daily letter-the pages of Gilead-addressed to his seven-year-old son so he can read it when he's grown and know not only about his absent father but his own history, family, and heritage. And what a letter it is! Not only is John Ames the most kind, observant, sensitive, and companionable of men to spend time with, but his story reaches back to his patriarchal Civil War great-grandfather, fiery preacher and abolitionist; comes up to his grandfather, also a reverend and in the War; to his father; and to his own life, spent in his father's church. This long story of daily life in deep Middle America-addressed to an unknown and doubting future-is never in the slightest way parochial or small, but instead it evokes on the pulse the richest imaginable identifying truths of what America was.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. Agency: Trident Media Group

From the Publisher

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

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171777524
Publisher:	Macmillan Audio
Publication date:	04/01/2005
Series:	Gilead Novel Series , #1
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Excerpt from Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Copyright &169; 2004 by Marilynne Robinson. Published in November, 2004 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.

I TOLD YOU LAST NIGHT THAT I MIGHT BE GONE sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I'm old, and you said, I don't think you're old. And you put your hand in my hand and you said, You aren't very old, as if that settled it. I told you you might have a very different life from mine, and from the life you've had with me and that would be a wonderful thing, there are many ways to live a good life. And you said, Mama already told me that. And then you said, Don't laugh! because you thought I was laughing at you. You reached up and put your fingers on my lips and gave me that look I never in my life saw on any other face besides your mother's. It's a kind of furious pride, very passionate and stern. I'm always a little surprised to find my eyebrows unsinged after I've suffered one of those looks. I will miss them.

It seems ridiculous to suppose the dead miss anything. If you're a grown man when you read this—it is my intention for this letter that you will read it then—I'll have been gone a long time. I'll know most of what there is to know about being dead, but I'll probably keep it to myself. That seems to be the way of things.

I don't know how many times people have asked me what death is like, sometimes when they were only an hour or two from finding out for themselves. Even when I was a very young man, people as old as I am now would ask me, hold on to my hands and look into my eyes with their old milky eyes, as if they knew I knew and they were going to make me tell them. I used to say it was like going home. We have no home in this world, I used to say, and then I'd walk back up the road to this old place and make myself a pot of coffee and a friend-egg sandwich and listen to the radio, when I got one, in the dark as often as not. Do you remember this house? I think you must, a little. I grew up in parsonages. I've lived in this one most of my life, and I've visited in a good many others, because my father's friends and most of our relatives also lived in parsonages. And when I thought about it in those days, which wasn't too often, I thought this was the worst of them all, the draftiest and the dreariest. Well, that was my state of mind at the time. It's a perfectly good old house, but I was all alone in it then. And that made it seem strange to me. I didn't feel very much at home in the world, that was a face. Now I do.

And now they say my heart is failing. The doctor used the term "angina pectoris," which has a theological sound, like misericordia. Well, you expect these things at my age. My father died an old man, but his sisters didn't live very long, really. So I can only be grateful. I do regret that I have almost nothing to leave you and your mother. A few old books no one else would want. I never made any money to speak of, and I never paid any attention to the money I had. It was the furthest thing from my mind that I'd be leaving a wife and child, believe me. I'd have been a better father if I'd known. I'd have set something by for you.

That is the main thing I want to tell you, that I regret very deeply the hard times I know you and your mother must have gone through, with no real help from me at all, except my prayers, and I pray all the time. I did while I lived, and I do now, too, if that is how things are in the next life.

I can hear you talking with your mother, you asking, she answering. It's not the words I hear, just the sounds of your voices. You don't like to go to sleep, and every night she has to sort of talk you into it all over again. I never hear her sing except at night, from the next room, when she's coaxing you to sleep. And then I can't make out what song it is she's singing. Her voice is very low. It sounds beautiful to me, but she laughs when I say that.

I really can't tell what's beautiful anymore. I passed two young fellows on the street the other day. I know who they are, they work at the garage. They're not churchgoing, either one of them, just decent rascally young fellows who have to be joking all the time, and there they were, propped against the garage wall in the sunshine, lighting up their cigarettes. They're always so black with grease and so strong with gasoline I don't know why they don't catch fire themselves. They were passing remarks back and forth the way they do and laughing that wicked way they have. And it seemed beautiful to me. It is an amazing thing to watch people laugh, the way it sort of takes them over. Sometimes they really do struggle with it. I see that in church often enough. So I wonder what it is and where it comes from, and I wonder what it expends out of your system, so that you have to do it till you're done, like crying in a way, I suppose, except that laughter is much more easily spent.

When hey saw me coming, of course the joking stopped, but I could see they were still laughing to themselves, thinking what the old preacher almost heard the say.

I felt like telling them, I appreciate a joke as much as anybody. There have been many occasions in my life when I have wanted to say that. But it's not a thing people are willing to accept. They want you to be a little bit apart. I felt like saying, I'm a dying man, and I won't have so many more occasions to laugh, in this world at least. But that would just make them serious and polite, I suppose. I'm keeping my condition a secret as long as I can. For a dying man I feel pretty good, and that is a blessing. Of course your mother knows about it. She said if I feel good, maybe the doctor is wrong. But at my age there's a limit to how wrong he can be.

That's the strangest thing about this life, about being in the ministry. And then sometimes those very same people come into your study and tell you the most remarkable things. 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 a find it, either.

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