x dismiss this message
Did you know you can edit this page?
-
Sign Into Shelfari
-
Choose something to edit
-
Save your contributions
see page history
Description edit
In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Characters/People edit
- John Ames: Main character (narrator) -- person who writes the letter to his son which comprises the novel. He turns 77 during the writing. He is a preacher, like his father and grandfathers. His father and grandfather are also named John Ames.
- Lila: Lila is John's second wife.
- Their son: Their son is six, going on seven. He is the intended reader of the letter, which we understand he will receive from his mother when he is a young adult. "The old men <in the congregation> call you Deacon." That's as close as the reader gets to learning the son's name.
- old Boughton (Robert or, as a child, Bobby): John's best friend
- John Ames (Jack) Boughton: The son of old Boughton, he is John's name sake and also the thorn in his side for almost as long as he has been alive.
- Edward: Edward was John's older brother who rejected religion.
- Della: Jack's wife and mother of his son.
- Tobias: The best friend and playmate of John's son.
- Karl Barth: Add a description of this character.
- Adam
- John Brown
- Rebecca
Quotes edit
-
“I have said at least once a week my whole adult life that there is an absolute disjunction between our Father's love and our deserving. Still, when I see this same disjunction between human parents and children, it always irritates me a little.”
John Ames, writer of letter -
“I have always liked the phrase "nursing a grudge," because many people are tender of their resentments, as of the thing nearest their hearts.”
John Ames -
“... God takes the side of sufferers against those who afflict them.”
John Ames -
“It seems to me there is less meanness in atheism by a good measure. <than in Christians who find fault with one another because of the differences in the beliefs in the denominations they choose to follow>”
John Ames -
“Of course he's right about many things, one of them being the destructive potency of religious self-righteousness.”
John Ames -
“It is one of the best traits of good people that they love where they pity. And this is truer of women than of men. So they get themselves drawn into situations that are harmful to them. I have seen this happen many, many times. I have always had trouble finding a way to caution against it. Since it is, in a word, Christlike.”
John Ames -
“Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of ... preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable--which ... we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be actual likenesses, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, untraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us.”
John Ames -
“Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.”
John Ames -
“Well, but you two are dancing around in your iridescent little downpour, whooping and stomping as sane people ought to do when they encounter a thing so miraculous as water.”
John Ames -
“I've developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books, than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books. This is not a new insight, but the truth of it is something you have to experience to fully grasp.”
John Ames -
“These people who can see right through you never quite do you justice, because they never give you credit for the effort you're making to be better than you actually are, which is difficult and well meant and deserving of some little notice.”
John Ames -
“If I feel that what I tell you is untrue in some way, or that I simply ought not to tell it, I can just destroy these pages. They certainly won't be the first I've destroyed. Back when I had a woodstove, it was a satisfyingly easy thing to do. There was a rightness to seeing nonsense and frustration fall into the flames. I'm thinking we should have somebody build us a barbecue”
John Ames -
“In the matter of belief, I have always found that defenses have the same irrelevance about them as the criticisms they are meant to answer. I think the attempt to defend belief can unsettle it, in fact, because there is always an inadequacy in argument about ultimate things.”
John Ames -
“I can tell you this, that if I'd married some rosy dame and she had given me ten children and they had each given me ten grandchildren, I'd leave them all, on Christmas Eve, on the coldest night of the world, and walk a thousand miles just for the sight of your face, your mother's face.”
John Ames -
“No good has come, no evil is ended. That is your peace.”
-
There’s a lot under the surface of life, everyone knows that. A lot of malice and dread and guilt, and so much loneliness, where you wouldn’t really expect to find it, either.
Highlighted by 137 Kindle customers -
You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.
Highlighted by 121 Kindle customers -
A little too much anger, too often or at the wrong time, can destroy more than you would ever imagine. Above all, mind what you say. “Behold how much wood is kindled by how small a fire, and the tongue is a fire”—that’s the truth.
Highlighted by 118 Kindle customers -
So my advice is this—don’t look for proofs. Don’t bother with them at all. They are never sufficient to the question, and they’re always a little impertinent, I think, because they claim for God a place within our conceptual grasp.
Highlighted by 118 Kindle customers -
There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.
Highlighted by 115 Kindle customers -
Love is holy because it is like grace—the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.
Highlighted by 114 Kindle customers -
There is a reality in blessing, which I take baptism to be, primarily. It doesn’t enhance sacredness, but it acknowledges it, and there is a power in that. I have felt it pass through me, so to speak. The sensation is of really knowing a creature, I mean really feeling its mysterious life and your own mysterious life at the same time.
Highlighted by 108 Kindle customers -
A good sermon is one side of a passionate conversation. It has to be heard in that way. There are three parties to it, of course, but so are there even to the most private thought—the self that yields the thought, the self that acknowledges and in some way responds to the thought, and the Lord. That is a remarkable thing to consider.
Highlighted by 94 Kindle customers -
It was Coleridge who said Christianity is a life, not a doctrine, words to that effect. I’m not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave you a mind so that you would make honest use of it. I’m saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own, not, so to speak, the mustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion of any particular moment.
Highlighted by 94 Kindle customers -
And they want me to defend religion, and they want me to give them “proofs.” I just won’t do it. It only confirms them in their skepticism. Because nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense.
Highlighted by 76 Kindle customers
Organizations edit
- Jayhawkers: militant abolitionists
- pro-slavery settlers: Those who wanted Kansas to be admitted to the Union as a slave state
- Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists: Christian denominations
First Sentence edit
I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I'm old, and you said, I don't think you're old.
Table of Contents edit
Series & Lists edit
This book is in Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read. (authoritative list)
This is book 2005 of 83 in Pulitzer Prize Winners - Fiction. (authoritative list)
Preceded by The Known World, and followed by March.
Authors & Contributors edit
- Marilynne Robinson (Author)
Other Contributors:
- Tim Jerome (Reader) - reads audio CD edition by Audio Renaissance
- Ida Jessen (Translator)
First Edition edit
Original Language: English
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Country: US
Publication Date: 2004
ISBN: 0374153892
Page Count: 247
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Country: US
Publication Date: 2004
ISBN: 0374153892
Page Count: 247
Awards edit
- Pulitzer Prize (2005: Fiction)
- Ambassador Book Award (2005: Fiction)
- Pen/Faulkner Award (Finalist, 2005: Fiction)
- National Book Critics Circle Award (2004: Fiction, #1)
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: PS3568.03125G55 2004
- Dewey: 813.54
Subjects edit
Popular Tags
See all 50 tags
More Books Like This edit
Books with Additional Background Information edit
We’re hiding the errata, movie connections, books that influenced this book, books influenced by this book, books that cite this book and books cited by this book sections. If you would like to add content to them, you must first make them visible.
