Gilead

In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, a kind of last testament to his remarkable forebears.'It is a book of such meditative calm, such spiritual intensity that is 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' - Neel Mukherjee, "The Times".'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 - that at any moment, it might all go wrong. In "Gilead", however, nothing goes wrong' - Jane Shilling, "Sunday Telegraph".

Gilead is no less a masterpiece than Housekeeping, Stunning . . . there are gems on every page of Gilead, but it is the whole construction that marks it as a great work, 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, A novel as big as a nation, as quiet as thought, and moving as prayer. Matchless and towering, A country of mystical sunsets, abandoned shacks, storms that could have come out of the book of Job, snowstorms that that can take your life within a few feet of your own front door, and wild rivers in which one can be baptised. I said Marilynne Robinson's prose was like clear, cold water and so it is - and sometimes it is about water too - you are never far from its cleansing, chilly power, or from the mysterious rush of the wind, sounding like the ocean in a region impossibly far from any sea

Marilynne Robinson, author of Housekeeping, Gilead, Home, Lila and Jack, is the winner of the Hemingway PEN award, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Women's Prize for Fiction and has been nominated twice for the International Booker Prize. She has also published six volumes of essays. In 2012, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama, and in 2016 she was given The Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. Robinson was one of TIME magazine's list of 100 most influential people.