For the Guardian the novelist named a ten best list of fictional clerics, including:
Gilead by Marilynne RobinsonRead about another cleric on the list.
Marilynne Robinson writes with almost biblical authority about John Ames, an elderly Congregationalist pastor for whom the Bible is the bedrock of life. As Ames records his memoirs for the seven-year-old son whom he knows he will never see reach adulthood, he struggles to come to terms both emotionally and intellectually with the legacy of his father and grandfather. Meanwhile, he is unsettled by the return of his dissolute godson, Jack Boughton (the hero of Robinson's subsequent novel, Home), who tests his notions of Christian forgiveness to the full.
Gilead is on Ayad Akhtar's list of three notable books on faith in the US, Michael Crummey's top ten list of literary feuds and Geraldine Brooks's five most important books list; it is a book Dalia Sofer would like to share with her children.
--Marshal Zeringue
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