This afternoon I was browsing books at Borders downtown and when I was about to leave the store for the ferry, a hardcover new book attracted my attention. GILEAD, by Marilynne Robinson. Is this THAT Marilynne Robinson? She is one of my all-time favourite authors, with the single novel HOUSEKEEPING. It's a work of sheer perfection and desolate beauty. Naturally I took up Gilead from the shelf and confirmed that this MR was that MR. The book was published in 2004 and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize 2005.
Of course I wanted the book but being a hardcover edition it was rather expensive and I had already other books to buy. I gave up and headed for the ferry terminal, wondering what that title could have meant. Gilead. Is that a name?
At home in the evening my daughter was looking for a story by Hans Christian Andersen. She needed one for her ESOL assignment and she said she wanted The Tin Soldier. The Steadfast Tin Soldier or The Brave Tin Soldier, whatever. I googled "the tin soldier" and could retrieve a translated text in no time. On printing it out, I noticed something. The location of the text was
I don't think I have ever encountered anybody by that name, in real life or in books, but the site is from Israel and I surmise that the name is Jewish. Is that a Jewish name then? I don't think MR is Jewish but her Gilead too must be a name, probably male, and presumably the book's hero or its subject anyway. A rare name encountered twice in this manner in a matter of several hours is something difficult to wave off.
I ended up by ordering a copy of MR's Gilead.
Then after reading the story aloud to my daughter, I was reminded of the almost chilling dark passion that filled HCA's stories, and remembered that the short story "The Girl in the Flammable Skirt" by Aimee Bender had a distinctive resonance with The Brave Tin Soldier. Another personal coincidence for me.
Where does the name come from?
