Thursday, December 12, 2013

Five top diary novels

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Allegra Frazier tagged five top diary novels, including:
Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson

This novel is also a personal record intended for an audience of one. The 2005 Pulitzer Prize winner is the journal of elderly and dying Reverend John Ames of Gilead, kept to be read later by his 7-year-old son. Ames details how he met his much younger wife and the effect she had on him, as well as touching events from his son’s early years. He also ruminates on his own childhood, his own father and grandfather, and his faith.
Read about the other novels on the list.

Gilead is on Michael Arditti's ten best list of fictional clerics, 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