I read Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead over the Thanksgiving holiday. I don’t often buy a contemporary novel solely on the strength of positive reviews, but Michael Dirda’s review (blogged on below) stuck in my mind for days and I found myself yearning to read the book for myself.

The holiday was an apt time for this book. My family and I were visiting Grandma and Grandpa in Harrisonburg, joined by my sister-in-law and her new husband and her stepdaughter, and amid much eating and hilarity and shopping and loving talk I found several hours in which to read the book. The surroundings and family warmth made the book even more resonant than it would have been anyway, so much so that at times I had to put the book down for fear I would return to the festivities with my face streaked with tears. They might have been tears of happiness or sadness–the book has plenty of both–or they might have been tears of wonder, which are the hardest tears to explain. In any event, I didn’t feel it proper to intrude my own reading ecstasies on everyone else at the table (or elsewhere), though I did read a couple of passages aloud as I went along, and there was a fine moment when I got to a passage on predestination in this household of staunch Presbyterians (sister-in-law and father-in-law are both Presby ministers, don’t you know). Mostly, though, I read the words and pondered them in my heart.

This really is a remarkable book. It reminds me of Sir Thomas Browne, of Flannery O’Connor, of George Bernanos (whose Diary of a Country Priest is mentioned in the book), even of George Herbert, a strong presence throughout whom Ames specifically discusses at one point.

But this is not a derivative book by any means. The voice of John Ames, the book’s protagonist, is unique, and compelling. There is equal power in his introspection and his narratives, a difficult trick that Robinson pulls off brilliantly. She also does something else brilliantly: she manages to convey the multiple levels of Ames’s self-reading while at the same time she suggests patterns apparently invisible to Ames that the reader may sense without feeling at all superior to the protagonist. Dramatic irony of this sort is rare, and is usually reserved for tragedy. This book, however, is not a tragedy.

I can only echo the praise others have given this book. The writing is limpid, wonderful. It’s a novel of ideas, a great character study, a great book about America. It’s something like a psalm, finally. One of the many things I’m grateful for this Thanksgiving is that I had the opportunity to read this book–and that Marilynne Robinson had the courage and skill with which to write it. Thank you.