In my run of Pulitzer novels, I’ve finished Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, and I have thoughts. Mostly on the negative side. I must say, it finished decently enough, but it had its problems.
There were moments throughout the book where an actual story seemed to want to take off, but then Robinson would throw in whole sections where she waxes philosophical and loses her momentum. The epistolary style is just not the right form for this. There was so much more that could have come from writing it outright, and not as a memoir that a dying father leaves to a son. I can’t get past the extreme detail of conversations and the depth of the man’s thoughts. They come out like, “I’m dying, and I want to leave something of myself for my son, so I’m going to write a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.” As lovely as that may sound, I thought it lacked coherence.
It seemed the book just couldn’t decide on what it wanted to be, and I didn’t much enjoy that aspect of it at all. The language was beautiful – and I love beautiful language – but it was too beautiful for its own good.
As for “story,” when she hit upon one of any kind, she would do quite well in the telling. But then she’d drop back and interrupt everything with the ramblings of her character – like she wants us to see some deep conflict in his heart which just doesn’t resonate on the page. It’s like, “Ah, here is something interesting and easy to understand,” that suddenly turns into a treatise on philosophy and deeper meaning. One just does not follow the other, and makes for a disjointed book. I was left wondering, “what will be the payoff? How can she end this? Am I doomed to wade through all of this rambling to find a crumb of a story here? Or even worse – nothing at all at the end?”
Like I said, it finished decently enough. But was it worth it? I think it could have been better if she’d written it as a straight-up chapter novel and not as a letter She’s got three more in the series now, but I really have little interest in seeking them out. I’ve still got to finish A Confederacy of Dunces and then get started on Lonesome Dove.