Some writers publish stories which all end up feeling the same. Marilynne Robinson, on the other hand, has written four novels around one central story – all are vastly different; all are utterly beguiling. Gilead began this foursome in 2004. The narratives revolve around the families of two preachers in 1950s America.

Jack, the eponymous anti-hero of this book, also featured in the second novel, Home. He is Rev Boughton’s dissolute son; a prodigal son; a ‘gentleman betrayed by circumstance’, who has ruined every good thing in his life, but has manners and disarming charm. ‘Cleverness has a special piquancy when it blooms out of the fraying sleeve of failure.’

Jack’s a white male and self-confessed bum, but loves Della Miles, a respectable black woman, a teacher and daughter of a Methodist bishop. They dance a dangerous pas de deux in segregated Missouri, to music of love and honour only they can hear. In a reversal of stereotypical status, she has a fine reputation to uphold; he has destroyed any social standing he may have had. Jack consistently embarrasses Della, who in turn keeps him upright. He worries that he’ll bring her harm; she worries that he’ll give up on himself.

Poetry and Hamlet are recurrent themes, and there is the sense of the two being ill-fated lovers like the mad prince and Ophelia. And like Hamlet, Jack thinks too deeply and the resulting confusion paralyses him into inaction. However, this is a more topical tragedy than Hamlet, and a more authentic love story than Romeo and Juliet.

The magnificence of Robinson’s writing is that it’s once poetic, subtly theological and profoundly philosophical, with more than a dash of humour. She is, without doubt, one of the greatest living writers today.

Reviewed by Bob Moore