This week, on a visit to the UK, Marilynne Robinson came along to the Guardian Review Book Club to talk to Professor John Mullan about her novel Gilead. Set in rural Iowa, it is the letter of aging congregationalist minister John Ames to his
young son from his second marriage, written as a loosely-connected series of thoughts, memories and religious homilies.
Robinson is an active member of the Congregational United Church of Christ in
Iowa, as well as an academic; she teaches literature, creative writing and sometimes theology. Professor Mullan began by asking her whether it was "useful to have God in a novel".
