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A review by bewildered_and_blase
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
3.0
When asked what I was reading, my answer could be summed up to: "250 pages of the last words of a dying preast from Iowa...but it's well written."
It was beautifull, it was poetic, and it was a struggle to read.
I usually enjoy good prose, thinking that we need more authors in contemptorary fiction who use language as an actual way of expression of something...you might say deeper. On that scale this book is an absolute gem. It certainly seems quite profound and is filled with small sparkles of poetic insights and historic references.
All that might seem well, but it was heavy ... not Tolstoy heavy, not shakespeare heavy...but even more, making it incredibly hard to focus. I might not even have finished it, if not for the public transport in Denmark which sponsored two extra hours for me to finish it.
And then again, maybe that wouldn't have made any difference. I would probably still have finished it. Not for the poetry or due to my will power, but due to the ability of the book to give me (a young northern european, who lives in an almost atheist milieu) the posibility of getting an insight in this priest's mind (who has such a different aproach to christianity) - something which might make it possible to understand the American way of thinking. Something which often seems queer, and hypocryte for a european, whose only contact with american culture seems to be through mass media.
This novel has many pluses, and gave a great insight in a part of society, which I haven't reflected much over yet. However, it's heaviness seemed way to much for me at this point of my life. Maybe I will read it again in 40 years, and maybe I will give it 5 stars then.
It was beautifull, it was poetic, and it was a struggle to read.
I usually enjoy good prose, thinking that we need more authors in contemptorary fiction who use language as an actual way of expression of something...you might say deeper. On that scale this book is an absolute gem. It certainly seems quite profound and is filled with small sparkles of poetic insights and historic references.
All that might seem well, but it was heavy ... not Tolstoy heavy, not shakespeare heavy...but even more, making it incredibly hard to focus. I might not even have finished it, if not for the public transport in Denmark which sponsored two extra hours for me to finish it.
And then again, maybe that wouldn't have made any difference. I would probably still have finished it. Not for the poetry or due to my will power, but due to the ability of the book to give me (a young northern european, who lives in an almost atheist milieu) the posibility of getting an insight in this priest's mind (who has such a different aproach to christianity) - something which might make it possible to understand the American way of thinking. Something which often seems queer, and hypocryte for a european, whose only contact with american culture seems to be through mass media.
This novel has many pluses, and gave a great insight in a part of society, which I haven't reflected much over yet. However, it's heaviness seemed way to much for me at this point of my life. Maybe I will read it again in 40 years, and maybe I will give it 5 stars then.