Boughton, father of many children, favors his son, named John Ames Boughton, above all others. The other constant in the book is Ames's friendship since childhood with "old Boughton," a Presbyterian minister. The tension between them, their love for each other and their inability to bridge the chasm of their beliefs is a constant source of rumination for John Ames. Ames writes of his father and grandfather, estranged over his grandfather's departure for Kansas to march for abolition and his father's lifelong pacifism. Robinson's prose asks the reader to slow down to the pace of an old man in Gilead, Iowa, in 1956. What should I record for you?" In the course of the narrative, John Ames records himself, inside and out, in a meditative style. "Your mother told you I'm writing your begats, and you seemed very pleased with the idea. His greatest regret is that he hasn't much to leave them, in worldly terms. He wants to leave an account of himself for this son who will never really know him.
The reason for the letter is Ames's failing health. Robinson takes the story away from being simply the reminiscences of one man and moves it into the realm of a meditation on fathers and children, particularly sons, on faith, and on the imperfectability of man. It is a summing-up, an apologia, a consideration of his life. He is writing a letter to his almost seven-year-old son, the blessing of his second marriage. The narrator, John Ames, is 76, a preacher who has lived almost all of his life in Gilead, Iowa. Robinson's books are unalike in every way but one: the same incisive thought and careful prose illuminate both. There are no invidious comparisons to be made. Books such as these take time, and thought, and a certain kind of genius. As with The Great Fire, Shirley Hazzards's return, 22 years after The Transit of Venus, it was worth the long wait. With Gilead, we have, at last, another work of fiction.
Since then, she has written two pieces of nonfiction: Mother Country and The Death of Adam. In 1981, Marilynne Robinson wrote Housekeeping, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and became a modern classic.
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