Gilead

While I'm in that part of the prairie... I've just read Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. What a book. What a beautiful book. Knowing, as I do, how all of you visitors to this blog act on my every recommendation without question, I urge you to read it yourself if you haven't. It contains an unusual kind of love story, has moments powerful with the fullness of the world, and presents the central relationship between the Reverend John Ames and Jack Boughton - a close friend's son - in a subtly shifting and, finally, most moving way. But, more than that, it is the best response you could want to the 'religion poisons everything' school of argument.