(no subject)

[decemberthirty]

I finished Marilynne Robinson's Gilead over the weekend. I don't have a whole lot more to say about it than what I said in my previous posts. The same things I liked about it in the beginning were the things I liked about it in the end: the measured simplicity of Robinson's prose, and the quiet and pensive voice of John Ames. Robinson allowed Ames to get a bit more complicated towards the end of the book, and I appreciated the acknowledgment that he is a flawed human being after all, as well as the opportunity to see some of the other aspects of his character. I was particularly fond of his description, late in the book, of how he fell in love with his wife and the school-boy crush he had on her at the age of sixty-five.

There's so much in this book--it deals with race, memory and the past, loss, the nature of religious experience, family and history--but it never feels heavy. It's one of the most successful character studies I've ever read, and is definitely one of the best books of this year for me.