Gilead

So tell us what the book and author is, Andrew, and how were you drawing on it in the writing of Hey Man? The book

is called Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, which is an important book for a lot of people.

I drew on it, again, probably subconsciously because it is a book being narrated by a man of faith.

As you said, it's a letter from a from an ageing minister to his young son.

Robinson is a writer like Laurie Moore, like Amy Bloom, who's so in control of their craft and there is something...

The scene I described about the swing or the scenes about family dinners and the scenes where she talks about Scripture and Revelation, they're all written in a tone that is so... melodious and hypnotic.

This is actually Gilead's second appearance on Take Four Books because it was chosen by Douglas Stewart as an influence on his Booker-nominated work John of John.

Why don't we listen now, Andrew, to what Douglas had to say on this programme about Marilynne Robinson's Gilead.

So I've been reading a lot of kind of Midwestern and Western elegiacs, like A River Runs Through It and Hemingway.

And I read one called Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, which is an absolutely incredible book about young children and aging parents and America and a lot of those things.

It was just something I really enjoyed.

Most exciting part of your job?

a four, foursome.

So Gilead and Home, right? Gilead, Home, and now Jack.

Yeah, I purchased those.

Those will be read shortly.

This took forever.

The first 68 pages of Lila meander between the past and the present.

As Lila watches her son play in the garden, she reflects on her transient life before coming to Gilead, the beginnings of her marriage to John Ames, and the decision to stay in Gilead, even though she continues to struggle with thoughts of running away.

Yeah.

He said to me... and he used to read, he used to be so ahead of the game in terms of prize lists.

He'd read the Booker list, and he'd read the Pulitzer list, and Gilead had just won the Pulitzer two years before, I think.

Mm-hmm.

In 2004.

So we were in GCSE science, and I remember him reaching me this copy of Gilead saying, "You'll like the God stuff in this." And so I read it, and I did not un- I knew instinctively that this writing is, is good.

Whatever good writing is, this is what this is.

But I read it at the top level.

Okay, great recommendation.

Mine for this week is the novel Home by Marilynne Robinson, which is the second book in the series of four that begins with the book Gilead.

Gilead is a book I've talked about at length on this show before.

Actually, this book, Home, focuses on characters who are present in Gilead, the novel, as well as Gilead, the eponymous fictional town in Iowa.

The action takes place in the same time, the same few weeks as Gilead, but from a completely different perspective.

So it's, you know...

It's interesting.

It's a marvelous conceit, I actually think.

Yes, a palate cleanser for the soul.

The novels the essay offers for that are Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, George Eliot's Middlemarch, and John Williams' Stoner.

Let's start with Gilead, which won the Pulitzer in 2005.

It's a very quiet book.

It's essentially a long, continuous letter written by an aging, dying Congregationalist minister in Iowa, John Ames, addressed to his very young son who will grow up without him.

You'll need a month.

At least.

And crucially, it says to keep Gilead on the bedside table as a grace-filled palate cleanser for when the others just get too heavy.