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Outstanding
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Kirkus Reviews
Robinson has composed, with its cascading perfections of symbols, a novel as big as a nation, as quiet as thought, and moving as prayer. Matchless and towering. [15 Aug 2004, p.772]
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Outstanding
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Publishers Weekly
Robinson's prose is beautiful, shimmering and precise; the revelations are subtle but never muted when they come, and the careful telling carries the breath of suspense.
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Outstanding
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Booklist Donna Seaman
Millennia of philosophical musings and a century of American history are refracted through the prism of Robinson's exquisite and uplifting novel as she illuminates the heart of a mystic, poet, and humanist. [Aug 2004, p.1874]
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Outstanding
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Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Those with biblical knowledge (of Hagar, Ishmael, and Gilead itself and the balm to be found there) may luxuriate in this modestly magnificent book as a psalm worthy of study, a sermon of the loveliest profundity. But truly, a concordance isn't necessary to read and reread Robinson's new novel for the literary miracle that it is.
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Outstanding
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New York Observer Ann Patchett
It's the stark unabashedness with which all forms of love are presented and praised - love of life, of family, of God and of country - that makes this quiet novel feel so radical.
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Outstanding
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Los Angeles Times Merle Rubin
Like all of Robinson's writing, Gilead is full of passages that beg to be read aloud, complex thoughts and emotions expressed with a felicity as engaging as it is illuminating. Most of all, in this book, through the wide-open eyes of her aging hero, Robinson manages to convey the miracle of existence itself.
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Outstanding
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Christian Science Monitor Ron Charles
For a country dazzled by literary and military pyrotechnics, this quiet new novel from Marilynne Robinson couldn't be less compatible with the times - or more essential...A quiet, deep celebration of life that you must not miss.
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Outstanding
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San Francisco Chronicle Olivia Boler
A refuge for readers longing for that increasingly rare work of fiction, one that explores big ideas while telling a good story.
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Outstanding
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Slate Ann Hulbert
Gilead is gripping. I will resort to a cliché with a suitably Christian echo to emphasize what even the most laudatory critics may well fail to convey: You will hang on every word.
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Outstanding
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The New York Times James Wood
It is religious, somewhat essayistic and fiercely calm. Gilead is a beautiful work -- demanding, grave and lucid.
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Outstanding
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Washington Post Michael Dirda
So serenely beautiful, and written in a prose so gravely measured and thoughtful, that one feels touched with grace just to read it.
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Outstanding
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The Onion A.V. Club Donna Bowman
Moving, revealing, beautiful.
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Outstanding
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The Spectator Simon Baker
A masterly study of the dying of the light.
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Outstanding
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Daily Telegraph Lisa Carpenter
The achievement of this novel lies not just in the magnificence of its individual aspects, but in its complete portrayal of a man - flawed, like all men, but not necessarily beyond redemption; and, perhaps, deserving of blessing. Her Ames is true: Marilynne Robinson.
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Outstanding
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Daily Telegraph Jane Shilling
The narrative spell remains unbroken, and one wakes from the enchantment to find one's view of the world quietly but indelibly changed.
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Outstanding
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New York Review Of Books Joan Acocella
A similar scene -- two people caught, in a critical moment, between the setting sun and the rising moon -- occurs in Willa Cather's "My Ántonia." Here, as there, it takes your breath away.
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Outstanding
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The Independent Stevie Davies
A movingly beautiful work.
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Favorable
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The Guardian Ali Smith
A book about the damaged heart of America, it is part vibrant and part timeworn, a slow burn of a read with its "crepuscular" narrator, its repetitions, its careful languidity.
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Favorable
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The Economist
A surprisingly quiet, modest work after such a wait, and all the more pleasing for it.
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Favorable
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Atlantic Monthly Mona Simpson
One senses none of the rub of greed informing the writing of the book - but because it lacks the mess of life poking up from the bottom, one is also left without the urgency of fiction.
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Favorable
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Wall Street Journal Matt Murray
While the plot could be stronger, there is a lot of pleasure to be had in the novel's probing, thoughtful narrative voice -- in Ms. Robinson's precise depiction of a religious man's interior life.
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Favorable
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Boston Globe Jane Vandenburgh
And though this book may not appeal to all readers, American culture is enriched by having the whole range of Marilynne Robinson's work. We need to remember John Ames's teaching: that grace is to be answered with gratitude.
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Favorable
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Chicago Sun-Times Mary Houlihan
A meditative book, one that rings with honesty and a complicated vision of human idealism. By recounting the unremarkable life of a quietly remarkable man, she enlightens and enriches the puzzle and subtle joy of human existence in a world we may not entirely understand but we must nevertheless forgive and embrace.
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Favorable
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Chicago Tribune Art Winslow
We are left, ultimately, with a kind of sermonizing in Gilead that is more reaffirmative than it is bleak.
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Mixed
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The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Catherine Bush
Gilead , in its subtlety and intelligence, is a fearless novel, if frustrating in its mutedness, a book that arouses more respect in me than passionate embrace. [20 Nov 2004, p.D4]
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Mixed
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The New Yorker
At first, there isn’t much urgency to the Reverend's task, and we're stuck Sunday-strolling through too many homiletic passages ("He was a good man"; "Well, that's the human condition, I suppose").
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Mixed
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Village Voice Mark Holcomb
A one-sided epistolary novel that ought to have acolytes swooning over her preternaturally intimate prose once again—when they aren't scratching their heads over the book's languidly didactic assessment of Christian precepts in practice.
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Mixed
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London Review Of Books Tessa Hadley
It’s impossible to know what to do with this surplus of characterisation. If Robinson’s purpose in Gilead is to represent the value of a religious apprehension of life which modernity, at its peril, has relegated to the parochial margin, she seems to undercut it at every turn.
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