Books: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Faith value

By John Ziebell

With the exception of Chicago Cubs fans, it's hard to imagine any sector of the American public waiting a quarter of a century for anything, but that's nearly how long readers have been anticipating a second novel from Marilynne Robinson, who won the PEN/Hemingway award for her 1981 debut, Housekeeping. The author used the intervening years to publish nonfiction while her novel grew from cult to classic status, a literary monument to the perfectibility of narrative voice. The recent release of Gilead finally rewards readers with an equally passionate but radically different kind of story.

Gilead is essentially a novel about faith. Biblical references aside--as much as that can be said for this novel--Gilead is a small Iowa town, circa 1956, the kind of mythical Midwestern world where people wave to each other as they walk tree-lined streets to the drugstore, etc. The town itself is less important than its significance to the novel's narrator, Reverend John Ames, a lifelong resident and third-generation preacher who, at 76, is dying of heart disease.

The novel is ostensibly a rambling letter Ames is writing for his 7-year-old son, part memoir, part history, part confession. Ames is one of the most generous and admirable characters in recent memory; it's almost hard to sell a protagonist this faultless. His grandfather was a Civil War volunteer, an ardent abolitionist who used to stand in the pulpit with a pistol in his waistband. He was often at odds, understandably, with the narrator's father, a pacifist and apologist but equally dedicated preacher. Ames himself tries to walk the middle path, a reasonable soul who cares deeply for those who put their trust in him. From this perspective he is an idealized small-town minister who is always ready to serve, from fixing water faucets to officiating at baptisms and funerals to surviving the endless and unchanging Jell-O molds generated by his congregation.

Religion is the novel's central focus, and its cast of characters is limited, but it would be unfair to imply that the world Robinson creates is either claustrophobic or incestuous. Ames' letter--or his first-person narrative, if you will--is both seamless and seductive. His voice is appealing because his character shares everything that runs through his mind, without reservation; his interpretations of the Ten Commandments, his thoughts on the thousands of sermons he has preached in his lifetime, his obvious love for his family and, of course, his many uncertainties.

Ames, like his father and grandfather, manages to avoid stereotype. He lost a wife and child at an early age, and is well into his 60s when he marries a much younger woman, Lila, and has the son to whom his letter is addressed. "Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters," he confides. This late-life change could reshape anyone's vision of hope, and there is true poignancy in the image of Ames clinging to the material world he knows he must soon depart.

Ames is also willing to share his failures, especially those concerning judgment and that most New Testament of virtues, forgiveness. The worst in Ames seems to surface whenever he deals with John Ames Boughton, his godson, the favorite child of his best friend. There may be reasons that the prodigal Boughton evokes fear and uncertainty and even disdain, but come on--how can a work steeped in religion not be about redemption?

Though set in the 1950s, the novel addresses some deeply unchanging issues with regard to faith, and Robinson makes some demands upon her readers along those lines. I assume there will be partisan issues at stake with a work like this; Gilead may not appeal, for instance, to rabid subscribers of a faith-based perspective other than Ames' fairly centrist Christianity. Robinson takes her religion seriously, but so did Flannery O'Connor and Willa Cather. For those willing to accept a deeply religious character as a viable fictional conceit in these intemperate times, this is an eloquent, luminous tale.