Gilead (2004) by Marilynne Robinson

Good God. This book, which won the 2005 Pulitzer and the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award, is a quiet heartbreaker.

The book is a fictional epistolary autobiography of a dying preacher whose son (aged only 7) will go most of his life without his father and, thus, the preacher/father is writing this book to the son. So, we start there, and Robinson manages to keep the reader engaged (even a heathen like me who'd rather not have long conversations about God, even with a book) and interested with sub-plots but the real wallop comes at the end when, suddenly and unexpectedly, you miss the old man, and painfully so. Robinson's story worms it's way into your heart without you knowing and makes itself at home quietly until you're struck by the smallest but most profound moment of the novel, and then the preacher is gone.

There are long conversations about God, yes, but those are magnanimous and inclusive. But what really got me was this old man's musings on his very young son and his friend's adult son. One instance I remember in particular is an paragraph or so about how the boy is spending the night at a friend's house and the preacher missed him dearly. Tiny moments like that are woven seamlessly with the history of the family, retrospection about sermons past, a little family drama involving an old friend, and the introspection about death and leaving behind a young family.

I'm going to have to get my hands on Robinson's Housekeeping and Home soon. Very soon. Well, as soon as I recover.