Less popular opinion, here, but Gilead--my first read by Robinson--was not one of overwhelm. We have a richly drawn John Ames who has lived a fairly full life in his small town ministerial work, but who is still troubled by legacy, by covetousness, by questions of Scripture, by an imminent death which will deny him the opportunity to teach his young son.  He sets about writing a long series of letters to his son, but their purpose soon finds its way into a deeper exploration of his own thinking and faith.

It's a great premise for a book and it is well executed. We can wrestle with his motivations along the way (and Robinson offers us enough ambiguity and nuance to make these wrestling worthwhile), we can argue with the subjectivities and omissions in his storytelling. Robinson makes it clear enough as we read that he has largely misread that which has given him the most pain, which makes us wonder if similar problems apply to his happinesses. And finally, he offers us some interesting takes on various points of Scripture as he reconciles his own experiences with more Calvinist doctrine, conflicting texts, and the work of atheist philosophers he reads. These might be some of the most interesting passages if they did not often become fairly didactic towards the readers rather than merely instructional for his son.

So the novel is fairly fast-paced for all of that, written in relatively brief and frequently topic-shifting missives. I found myself a bit off-put, though, that Robinson seems to find the most important elements of this book the Christian work and the untold story of a seeming antagonist rather than the more fascinating and subtle work of memory and framing, of misreading and misrepresenting, of the degrees our own minds--seeking to resolve legacy when facing mortality--will work to deceive ourselves.