"To compensate a little for the treachery and weakness of my memory, so extreme that it has happened to me more than once to pick up again, as recent and unknown to me, books which I had read carefully a few years before . . . I have adopted the habit for some time now of adding at the end of each book . . . the time I finished reading it and the judgment I have derived of it as a whole, so that this may represent to me at least the sense and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it." (Montaigne, Book II, Essay 10 (publ. 1580))

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Gilead (Marilynne Robinson, 2004)

Book club selection (via NOC; session held December 18, 2016).

Minister based in western Iowa gets married late in life; impending heart trouble prompts him to write letters to his 7-year-old son - stuff the kid will read as an adult.  Great reviews; Pulitzer prize winner; but our group didn't seem to connect all that well to the book.  Including me - and I should have been the perfect audience for this.

The letter-writer's father and grandfather also were ministers; the grandfather was an ardent abolitionist, associated with John Brown and "bloody Kansas".  His brother came back from college professing atheism.

There are elegant passages; some of the story line around young Jack Boughton took some form; but too much meandering.  There were some interesting parallels across the generations - and between the letter-writer and Jack Boughton - not enough to drive my interest.
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