Book Club with Marilynne Robinson

Pulitzer prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson joins the Guardian Live Book Club to discuss Jack, the fourth in her Gilead series.

Jack makes Robinson’s celebrated Gilead novels a quartet. Set in “a dogged little outpost in Iowa”, in the middle of the 20th century, these connected novels explore ideas of faith, redemption, sin and joy through the everyday lives of their characters, while also addressing the problems of poverty and racism at the heart of American society. They have many admiring readers, including Barack Obama, who awarded her the National Humanities Medal and praised “her grace and intelligence in writing”. They have also earned her a Pulitzer prize and the Orange prize for fiction.

Jack tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the son of a Presbyterian minister, who in post-World War Two St Louis, then still segregated, falls in love with African-American school teacher Della Miles – and what follows is a poignant exploration of love, racism and religion in small-town America.

Join us to hear one of America’s defining writers talk about this remarkable series of novels. This event is part of our online Book Club, in which The Guardian’s chief books writer Lisa Allardice talks to leading writers about their latest novels, the creative process and isolation. They will also be answering your questions.

£5 plus £0.83 booking fee











When: Mon., Oct. 12, 2020 at 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Pulitzer prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson joins the Guardian Live Book Club to discuss Jack, the fourth in her Gilead series.

Jack makes Robinson’s celebrated Gilead novels a quartet. Set in “a dogged little outpost in Iowa”, in the middle of the 20th century, these connected novels explore ideas of faith, redemption, sin and joy through the everyday lives of their characters, while also addressing the problems of poverty and racism at the heart of American society. They have many admiring readers, including Barack Obama, who awarded her the National Humanities Medal and praised “her grace and intelligence in writing”. They have also earned her a Pulitzer prize and the Orange prize for fiction.

Jack tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the son of a Presbyterian minister, who in post-World War Two St Louis, then still segregated, falls in love with African-American school teacher Della Miles – and what follows is a poignant exploration of love, racism and religion in small-town America.

Join us to hear one of America’s defining writers talk about this remarkable series of novels. This event is part of our online Book Club, in which The Guardian’s chief books writer Lisa Allardice talks to leading writers about their latest novels, the creative process and isolation. They will also be answering your questions.

£5 plus £0.83 booking fee

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