Oprah Winfrey has selected Marilynne Robinson’s critically acclaimed Gilead novels as the latest picks for her book club.
“I’m thrilled to tell you that my new Oprah’s Book Club selection is not one book but four books: Gilead, Home, Lila, and Jack,” Winfrey said in a news release. “As I was recently reading author Marilynne Robinson’s latest novel, Jack, I thought it would be wonderful to explore her entire Gilead universe through these four novels. I am looking forward to going on this journey with our Book Club community over the coming months.”
The books in Robinson’s Gilead series are among the most celebrated in contemporary American literature. Robinson won the Pulitzer Prize for Gilead, the Women’s Prize for Fiction for Home, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Gilead and Lila.
In a starred review for the series’ most recent book, Jack, a critic for Kirkus called the novel “an elegantly written proof of the thesis that love conquers all—but not without considerable pain.”
In an essay for O, the Oprah Magazine, critic Hamilton Cain wrote, “[Robinson’s] moral authority is commanding, and her ear for our country’s language—its conversational rhythms, its plainspokenness—is impeccable. Here’s a writer who listens to us all, as well as to the yearnings of her characters.”
“Oprah Winfrey is a singular voice in this country and in the world,” Robinson said in a statement. “It is wonderful and amazing that my books will have the kind of attention only she could bring to them.”
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
