Gilead: A Companion Review

Firstly, before I begin my review of Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, I would like to apologise for how ridiculously long-overdue this post is. This is not directed so much at my readership (Hi, Dad), but at the readership of Catie, who has kindly put off posting her companion review of Robinson's companion-novel Home in order that I might finish my review first. Secondly, I would like to apologise that in spite of the foot-dragging and time spent on this, the review is still a bit half-baked owing to the fact that I didn't really feel all that affected by Robinson's otherwise wholly competent and skilfully written novel.

Gilead is a novel in the form of a memoir, ostensibly written by an ageing pastor, John, facing his final days on Earth in a small midwest town. It's all written in first-person reflective form and focuses largely on the themes of mortality, spirituality and grace. There is also a strong emphasis on notions of the 'self' and identity; as the narrator says in describing a sermon, there are three ‘selves’: 'the self that yields the thought, the self that acknowledges and in some way responds to the thought, and the Lord.' (There is possibly room to do a Freudian reading but I'm not touching it with a ten-foot pole).

As our narrator nears his inevitable final day on Earth he seeks to leave his young son (who is addressed throughout the book as 'you') with a comprehensive collection of thoughts to remember him by. His intentions are complicated by the unheralded return of the town’s prodigal son, Jack, the son of his best friend and fellow pastor. The book/memoir begins to take on the form of a personal struggle, as the narrator grapples with twin threats: Jack in the present, as well as his memories of Jack from the past, to which he has failed to reconcile himself.

His conflict is intensified as Jack starts to get along well with his (John’s) wife and child; and he wavers between wanting to warn his family away from Jack, and wanting to remain gracious and forgiving in his final days.

The narrator keeps returning to this trichotomy of self as he describes Jack as his ‘other self’ (Jack being the colloquial form of John - Jack was actually baptised after our narrator) and, being a pastor, God is an implied omnipresence looking over their interactions and – one hopes – guiding his conflicted self as he looks to impart his wisdom through these pages.

The struggle introduces an emphatic theme of forgiveness and grace; and his communication takes the form not only of a memoir but also a reflection; he frequently has to check himself as he verges on value judgements which are unnecessary and unwelcome in the rationalising and sobering thoughts with which he wants to leave his son.

One of the shortcomings of this theme is that through the constant conflict, and correcting himself, we kind of lose the character of the narrator in the process. The memoir style and the fact that it is all addressed to 'you', forcing us to see it through the eyes of his son, makes it less about him and more about his ideas, and the occasional contradictions - while apt - sometimes made me lose track of whom I was reading and he emerged at times as an irritating Hamlet-esque character. In spite of his waverings, it was obvious that he would eventually spill the beans on Jack to his son, and at times I felt like yelling "Just do it already!" at the book, although I actually didn't feel like that, because that would be a bit weird.

The memoir style starts to drag on a bit towards the middle where I felt I'd had enough of his reflections, and then just when you feel the book might be dragging on, the memoir style almost fails itself as it starts to take on far more of a straight narratorial style. John begins to dictate to the journal not only what had happened 'in the past' but also what is happening in the present - or rather, the events of the past 24 or fewer hours. Jackbecomes not only this uncomfortalbe figure with a shadowy, questionable past that John keeps trying to avoid mentioning, but also an uncomfortable, slightly unwelcome figure with even more shadowy present circumstances and he elucidates Jack's past gradually as he narrates Jack's present.

So while I started to feel slightly uninspired by the mid-section, I started to feel a bit incredulous by the end as the book, in its ambition to maintain an unconventional narrative voice, took an inevitable slide into more conventional 'this happened. Then he said this' kind of techniques.

My major criticism with the book, though, lies in its ending. Without giving too much away (and remember, it's a dying memoir, so presumably when it ends it means our narrator is dead), let's just say it doesn't end with any highly cynical meta-sentence like "Oh my God, son!! You'll never guess what just ha-" *book ends abruptly* Instead, the book ends very, very neatly, with the plot tied up and even some room left for a few concluding, carefully chosen resolution-style remarks to summarise the book's themes.

I'm sorry, but life just isn't like that. Therefore I feel where Gilead's ending is concerned, art does not imitate life. It's quite possible that I'm coming at this book from a too wordly, cynical perspective, given that Robinson's emphasis is on spirituality and themes rather than gritty biographical realism, but I thought a little ambiguity in the ending wouldn't have gone amiss. Instead our 'I could die any moment' narrator is given a convenient chance to finish his epilogue and leave the world with a complete memoir, which bleeds into my pet peeve of authors giving us too much of an idea what we're supposed to think. All it really did was make me over-conscious of the fact that I was reading not a memoir but a book, and a book written by someone who was trying to make a point and draw out themes.

So, criticisms aside (and my gosh there have been a lot, haven't there? Aren't I Mr Negative), how did I feel about the book? Well as I said at the start of this blog post if you'd bothered paying attention, it was a bit of a middle-of-the-road work. I believe in many ways I'm completely the wrong audience for this book, but I also feel that people who are the right audience for this book will get little more than I did out of this book, other than a reaffirmation of their own thoughts about forgiveness, mortality, etc.

And there's a lot to like in this book, too. Robinson's musings on spirituality and interpretations on scripture are intriguing, and her extrapolations from the notion that grace ultimately comes from God into the 'real World' are where the book works.

But then those strongest points are nothing I feel strongly about, and therefore while there's nothing to dislike outright about Gilead I also found nothing to fall in love with either. It's a good book - possibly even great - just not my cup of fur. (That's a ridiculously arch reference, by the way)

As Clarkson would say, and on that bombshell, I'm a pompous twat with my head up my ass.