I finally read Gilead. Cannot decide whether I am beguiled or nauseated. It’s a remarkable attempt to describe how a rich culture could be contrived just out of the Bible and the prairies. It reflects subtly and well on the relationship between eternity and time. It has beauty.

And honesty about the sheer difference and impenetrability of human chapter. And yet something feels wrong. I think its the suggestion of an aestheticised Calvinism. We just have to receive multifarious gifts and respond artistically. Grace is unearned. Forgiveness unilateral.

So where is the ethical drama of life, the real need for repentance and reform? The terror of evil and the possibility of defeating it and of personal transfiguration? Or the flash of goodness and glory that is more than than small-town peace?