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Gilead

An Oprah's Book Club Pick
  • Author
    • Marilynne Robinson
Format
Regular price £9.99
Regular price Sale price £9.99

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION and THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD



AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK

In 1956, towards the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son: 'I told you last night that I might be gone sometime... You reached up and put your fingers on my lips and gave me that look I never in my life saw on any other face besides your mother's. It's a kind of furious pride, very passionate and stern. I'm always a little surprised to find my eyebrows unsinged after I've suffered one of those looks. I will miss them.'

'A visionary work of dazzling originality' ROBERT MCCRUM, OBSERVER

'Writing of this quality, with an authority as unforced as the perfect pitch in music, is rare and carries with it a sense almost of danger' JANE SHILLING, DAILY TELEGRAPH

'A beautiful novel: wise, tender and perfectly measured' SARAH WATERS

'A masterpiece' SUNDAY TIMES

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  • Published: Aug 06 2020
  • Pages: 288
  • 196 x 127mm
  • ISBN: 9781844081486
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Press Reviews

  • Peter Hitchens

    Mail Online
    Her poetic, almost biblical style of writing... flows like clear cold water and is full of quiet power while remaining oddly conversational... People say they love these books, and I can see why. Quite how they can do so without discerning within them a serious, deep, patient but modest defence of the Christian proposition, I do not know
  • Sunday Times
    Gilead is no less a masterpiece than Housekeeping
  • Daily Telegraph
    Stunning... there are gems on every page of Gilead, but it is the whole construction that marks it as a great work
  • Independent
    The slow pulse of Robinson's writing slows the reader's eye and mind, and creates in the reading process a literary version of the narrator's spiritual experience. Gilead reminds us that words have power to spare, to forgive, to do justice
  • Kirkus Reviews
    A novel as big as a nation, as quiet as thought, and moving as prayer. Matchless and towering
  • Sarah Waters
    A beautiful novel: wise, tender and perfectly measured
  • Robert McCrum

    Observer
    A visionary work of dazzling originality
  • Jane Shilling

    Sunday Telegraph
    Writing of this quality, with an authority as unforced as the perfect pitch in music, is rare and carries with it a sense almost of danger
  • Neel Mukherjee

    The Times
    It is a book of such meditative calm, such spiritual intensity that it seems miraculous that her silence was only for 23 years; such measure of wisdom is the fruit of a lifetime. Robinson's prose, aligned with the sublime simplicity of the language of the bible, is nothing short of a benediction. You might not share its faith, but it is difficult not to be awed, moved and ultimately humbled by the spiritual effulgence that lights up the novel from within
  • Sarah Churchill

    Times Literary Supplement
    "Grace is not so poor a thing that it cannot present itself in any number of ways", Ames tells of his son; the same can be said of this book, one of the best American novels in recent memory, so replete with grace that almost anyone should find a balm in Gilead
  • Michael Arditti

    Daily Mail
    Gilead is Marilynne Robinson's first novel since her highly acclaimed debut, Housekeeping, 24 years ago, and its measured prose manifests a spiritual power that well rewards the wait
  • Washington Post
    So serenely beautiful and written in a prose so gravely measured and thoughtful, that one feels touched with grace just to read it
  • Elle
    Rapturous... astonishing... Gilead is an inspired work from a writer whose sensibility seems steeped in holy fire
  • Los Angeles Times
    Poignant, absorbing, lyrical... Robinson manages to convey the miracle of existence itself
  • San Francisco Chronicle
    Gilead is a refuge for readers longing for that increasingly rare work of fiction, one that explores big ideas while telling a good story