Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Academia Nuts book club here in Winter Park/Orlando
The first of this academic year's readings:

Marilynne Robinson's Gilead

Balm in 'Gilead' for Robinson's fans

Kind, elderly preacher faces death and sin in author's first novel in 23 years

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/21/RVG7T9PUO31.DTL

Reviewed by Olivia Boler, San Francisco Chronicle

Sunday, November 21, 2004

It's the Balm
Grace and truth: Marilynne Robinson returns to fiction

by Mark Holcomb, Village Voice
October 25th, 2004 5:35 PM

http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0443,holcomb,57837,10.html

(excerpt) (Ames, the 76-yr. old preacher) possesses an agile intellect and an intimidating capacity for mindfulness—a gift, no doubt, of his physical infirmity, but also of a lifetime of writing, reading, and thinking. Indeed, despite the authentic vernacular, Ames's voice is nearly identical to that of his creator: In a recent interview, Robinson proclaimed that "grace and truth must discipline thought," a line she might've cribbed from the reverend—or vice versa.

'Gilead'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61308-2004Nov18.html
By Michael Dirda, the Washington Post

Sunday, November 21, 2004; Page BW15

(excerpt) Marilynne Robinson draws on all of these associations in her new novel, which -- let's say this right now -- is so serenely beautiful, and written in a prose so gravely measured and thoughtful, that one feels touched with grace just to read it. Gilead possesses the quiet ineluctable perfection of Flaubert's "A Simple Heart" as well as the moral and emotional complexity of Robert Frost's deepest poetry. There's nothing flashy in these pages, and yet one regularly pauses to reread sentences, sometimes for their beauty, sometimes for their truth: "Adulthood is a wonderful thing, and brief. You must be sure to enjoy it while it lasts."