The premise was intriguing, and Robinson withheld enough details that made it almost mysterious. I enjoyed the first fifty pages, and I was left with more questions than answers. As the novel progressed, more details began to be filled in, and the reader begins to understand the characters, setting and purpose. I appreciated that Robinson jumped right in: this novel is a letter from father to son the reader's ignorance of these two characters is not the focus. Gilead seemed almost stream-of-consciousness at first. It should be a novel I love, yet I struggled to finish it and admit I was wowed by neither the story nor the writing. It's a character-driven, Midwestern narrative by one of our best contemporary writers. My thoughts: Gilead is a novel I'm been meaning to read for years. Ames nears the end of his life in the 1950's, he begins a letter to his young son because Ames realizes his son is too young to really know him. The backstory: Gilead won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005, the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2004, and was longlisted for the Orange Prize in 2006.
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