Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson
I find the writing in this book achingly beautiful. A review is too far out of my comfort zone to even attempt, but I must say I've never read a book quite like it.
Some books pull you in with the depth, complexity, or uniqueness of the story....you must keep reading to see what happens next, and next, and then next. I love these books; I love needing to steal every spare moment I have to quench my curiosity thirst.
Other books have characters you find so compelling, so intriguing, so believable that even if you don't like them you feel driven to understand them more completely. You admire the author for being able to put you right inside the character's skin. I'm always sad when these books end, it feels like a personal loss of some sort.
This book.....well, here's the thing. I earmark pages in my books. I own them, I can do what I please. I earmark pages with sentences I find marvelous, with concepts I'm interested in exploring further, with dialog I think is brilliantly written... there are a number of reasons I might earmark a page. And I prefer earmarking over highlighting or underlining because I love the rediscovery during re-reads, seeing if whatever I earmarked it for stands up to the test of time. Can I find it? Do I still love it, whatever it is? If so, the earmark stays. If not, I simply unfold it. My point being, I'm a little more than halfway through this book, and it has more earmarks than any other I own.
I don't imagine this to be a universally-loved book. I would even wager that many people will say they found it too slow, about "nothing." I find it stunning.
This book comes to me during a period of contemplating the what's-it-all-about-ness of life. The narrator's appreciation for the simple wonders and beauty that everyday life holds soothes me, it creates a sense of hopefulness. This may seem contradictory...it's a Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, nothing simple about that. The author's accomplishment may be bigger than anything I could hope to achieve, but the character she created is someone I needed to meet just now.
Earmarked, page 28:
.....In writing this, I notice the care it costs me not to use certain words more than I ought to. I am thinking about the word "just." I almost wish I could have written that the sun just shone and the tree just glistened, and the water just poured out of it and the girl just laughed....when it's used that way it does indicate a stress on the word that follows it, and also a particular pitch of the voice. People talk that way when they want to call attention to a thing existing in excess of itself, so to speak, a sort of purity or lavishness, at any rate something ordinary in kind but exceptional in degree. So it seems to me at the moment. There is something real signified by that word "just" that proper language won't acknowledge.
I am also inclined to overuse the word "old," which actually has less to do with age, as it seems to me, than it does with familiarity. It sets a thing apart as something regarded with a modest, habitual affection. Sometimes it suggests haplessness or vulnerability. I say "old Boughton," I say "this shabby old town," and I mean that they are very near my heart.
Some books pull you in with the depth, complexity, or uniqueness of the story....you must keep reading to see what happens next, and next, and then next. I love these books; I love needing to steal every spare moment I have to quench my curiosity thirst.
Other books have characters you find so compelling, so intriguing, so believable that even if you don't like them you feel driven to understand them more completely. You admire the author for being able to put you right inside the character's skin. I'm always sad when these books end, it feels like a personal loss of some sort.
This book.....well, here's the thing. I earmark pages in my books. I own them, I can do what I please. I earmark pages with sentences I find marvelous, with concepts I'm interested in exploring further, with dialog I think is brilliantly written... there are a number of reasons I might earmark a page. And I prefer earmarking over highlighting or underlining because I love the rediscovery during re-reads, seeing if whatever I earmarked it for stands up to the test of time. Can I find it? Do I still love it, whatever it is? If so, the earmark stays. If not, I simply unfold it. My point being, I'm a little more than halfway through this book, and it has more earmarks than any other I own.
I don't imagine this to be a universally-loved book. I would even wager that many people will say they found it too slow, about "nothing." I find it stunning.
This book comes to me during a period of contemplating the what's-it-all-about-ness of life. The narrator's appreciation for the simple wonders and beauty that everyday life holds soothes me, it creates a sense of hopefulness. This may seem contradictory...it's a Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, nothing simple about that. The author's accomplishment may be bigger than anything I could hope to achieve, but the character she created is someone I needed to meet just now.
Earmarked, page 28:
.....In writing this, I notice the care it costs me not to use certain words more than I ought to. I am thinking about the word "just." I almost wish I could have written that the sun just shone and the tree just glistened, and the water just poured out of it and the girl just laughed....when it's used that way it does indicate a stress on the word that follows it, and also a particular pitch of the voice. People talk that way when they want to call attention to a thing existing in excess of itself, so to speak, a sort of purity or lavishness, at any rate something ordinary in kind but exceptional in degree. So it seems to me at the moment. There is something real signified by that word "just" that proper language won't acknowledge.
I am also inclined to overuse the word "old," which actually has less to do with age, as it seems to me, than it does with familiarity. It sets a thing apart as something regarded with a modest, habitual affection. Sometimes it suggests haplessness or vulnerability. I say "old Boughton," I say "this shabby old town," and I mean that they are very near my heart.