Monday, September 05, 2005

Gilead

I've been meaning to check out Gilead from the library. It was written by Marilynne Robinson, who is a professor at the University of Iowa's renowned writer's workshop.



The novel, Robinson's first since 1981, won the Pulitzer Prize this year. I had also heard it's about a father-son relationship, which was of interest to me, being a father and a son.

Sharon checked it out last week and read it. She thought it was very good and highly recommended it to me. Today I picked it up and read a little bit. It pulled me in immediately. The writing is unbelievable. It's not sparse like Hemingway, but you feel every word is chosen for a purpose.

One of the moments that has stood out for me early was this passage:

A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.

This lead me to think about the different sorts of relationships we have with different people in our lives. My wife knows the present me best, for instance. There's no up or down that she hasn't seen. My parents know me in a different way. They have the memory of the small child, the young boy, the rebellious teenager, and the grown man. Reconciling all of that in their minds must be difficult. Who am I really to them?

Maybe that's why "loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension" rang so true to me.

Anyway, I highly recommend the novel. It's wonderful and I'm only 27 pages into it.

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