The latest addition of the UCWbL’s Staff Picks has arrived!
Check out Justin, Tom M., and Javaria’s triple endorsement for these two midwestern classics…
GILEAD and HOME by Marilynne Robinson
Good reads for… Anyone who loves fiction and poetry. Many passages of the novels border on poetry. The novels also would appeal to anyone interested in history–or those from the Midwest.
What are they about? Gilead and Home are both set in fictional Gilead, Iowa and follow the Ames and Boughton families. Both explore dimensions of family life and questions of faith, philosophy, and mortality.
So why are these books top picks? Robinson’s prose allows you to become immersed into the novel’s setting, and, by the end, you feel as though you’re intimately connected with the characters–characters whose perspectives you might never otherwise encounter. These are novels that you don’t want to end.
Justin, Tom M., and Javaria’s favorite quote from Gilead: “The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light, just as a candle flame looks beautiful in the light of morning. Light within light…It seems to me to be a metaphor for the human soul, the singular light within that great general light of existence.”
