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 PrintableVersion Shelf lifeLooking at secular booksGILEAD I promise that this will be the last American novel I review for a while, as the column has become rather US-dominated recently. But Gilead is worth our staying across the Atlantic for another month! Gilead is formed of a long epistle, written as a journal over several weeks from an ageing pastor, conscious of his approaching death, to his young son. The setting is 1950s Iowa, in a town called Gilead, which is only ‘a dogged little outpost in the sandhills’. The events described cover a century’s worth of history, from the Civil War, through the Great Depression, and into the 1950s life of TV and cinema. Extraordinary charactersAll these are viewed side on, as it were, through family memories and epiphany-like moments, and along the way we meet extraordinary characters, like the narrator’s ‘ashy’ grandfather who preached with his pistol in his belt, supported the Union cause and stole from his daughter-in-law to give to those in need. John Ames, our narrator, takes us in and out of the past, threading recollections together with advice, quotations (to read a book which quotes George Herbert, John Donne, Isaac Watts and Jean Calvin is a real treat!) and gentle questions. The writing is fresh and conversational, with an amazing turn of phrase; John Ames talks of ‘my sullen old reptilian self’, a bean salad ‘which to me looked distinctly Presbyterian’, and describes his son on a swing ‘with that bold planted stance of a sailor on a billowy sea’. It is this skilful creation of character which does what so many great writers just cannot do — make a good person interesting and appealing. The book is so beautifully written that halfway through I realised I would have to go back to the beginning and read more slowly to savour these words, and to make the connections suggested by the text. Through the generationsAnd what are these connections? Through several different generations and families, father/son relationships are explored, with the parable of the prodigal son overshadowing, but rarely explicitly discussed. Love in a broader sense is eulogised, the created is seen as sacred and an unsentimental appreciation of the value of suffering is present throughout. Often the adjective ‘ashy’ is used, it seems that people and places are rescued out of the fire very often, which points forward to redemption and the certainty of heaven. So this is a hopeful book, something which reviewers both sides of the Atlantic have picked up, all rating Gilead highly, some mystified and others cautious about its suppositions. If your pastor is a reader, he would love a copy of this book — it has a lot of humour seemingly designed for the preacher — and anyone, believer or not, who does not need an instantly gripping plot, could benefit from this stimulating and celebratory novel. Sarah Allen© Evangelicals Now - September 2006 |
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