Number 49 Gilead - Marilynne Robinson

This was this month's book group book.  I'd never heard of Marilynne Robinson before this was named for this month's read.

Apparently this took 24 years to write and won her the Pulitzer - the book starts with three pages of ecstatic reviews of this book. It must be the masterpiece the Sunday times claims it to be on the front cover then...

There certainly is a lot to admire about this book.  The prose is genuinely good.  It flows smoothly and reads easily. The characterisation of our narrator is excellent and totally believable.

However, and this is a huge however, it's not a particularly fun book to read.  There is no real story.  The lead character is an elderly pastor in small town America.  He's only apparently left the town of Gilead twice, once with his father to fnd his Grandfather's grave in the depths of Kansas (one of the most interesting segments of the book) and his time in seminary. Now he's old and close to death and writing a letter to his young son to read after his death.

Ninety percent of this book is his philosophical musings on the nature of god and the meaning of life and why are we here and is this young man (his Godson) who has recently returned to town after a twenty year absence getting too friendly with his wife?

I have no objection to books where very little happens.  Jon McGregor writes these all the time and I love them.  Jon McGregor can make the mundane seem like the most important thing in the world.  He manages to discuss the bigger questions in his books by concentrating on the small.  Marilynne Robinson goes straight for the big stuff for most of the book and IMHO the book suffers as a consequence.

There are good bits, any time he's telling stories about his grandfather, the interest quotient increases exponentially. There are occasional flashes of humour - nothing laugh out loud funny, but a few wry smiles.  And, as mentioned, the writing is good.  She can tell a good story if she wants to.  So why doesn't she?

There are hints of a wider plot, of things happening that the narrator is building up to telling us, but he never does. Is John Ames Boughton actually his biological son.  He might be.  But there's no clarity given on the issue.  Is John Ames Boughton too close to the clergyman's wife.  He might be.  But there's no clarity given on the matter.  Did he know the clergyman's wife before she came to town?  He might have done, but....

The lack of clarity becomes extremely frustrating for this particular reader.  The lack of anything resembling an actual storyline is particularly frustrating.  We get a very nice insight into the life of this man in his tiny outpost in a practical ghost town. It's all very worthy.  There are some bon-mots to be found.  But no frigging story.

I was glad I finished this book, there was one section when we heard JAB's backstory where it looked like something particularly interesting might happen.  but it didn't.  Our narrator simply rethought his feelings about JAB and all was good with the town of Gilead - well all was good in the narrator's head at any rate and all was forgiven.

A disappointing 6/10 - for the prose alone,