Thursday, April 05, 2012

Top 10 literary feuds

Poet and novelist Michael Crummey is from Newfoundland, the setting for much of his writing. His first book of poems, Arguments with Gravity, was awarded the Writer's Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award for Poetry. Crummey's novels include River Thieves, The Wreckage, and the award-winning Galore.

For the Guardian, he named his top ten literary feuds.

One title on the list:
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Gilead is the story of three generations of preachers in the American midwest from the civil war to the 1950s. The patriarch is a firebrand abolitionist who wore a pistol in the pulpit and lost an eye fighting for the Union cause, his son and grandson are devoted pacifists. The feud is a bloodless conflict of opposing convictions, though the wounds inflicted are real and some are permanent. A book about the infinite possibilities, and the human limitations, of forgiveness.
Read about another novel on the list.

Gilead is one of Geraldine Brooks's five most important books; it is a book Dalia Sofer would like to share with her children.

--Marshal Zeringue