Home: A Novel
Hailed as "incandescent," "magnificent," and "a literary miracle" (Entertainment Weekly), hundreds of thousands of readers were enthralled by Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. Now Robinson returns with a brilliantly imagined retelling of the prodigal son parable, set at the same moment and in the same Iowa town as Gilead. The Reverend Boughton's hell-raising son, Jack, has come home after twenty years away. Artful and devious in his youth, now an alcoholic carrying two decades worth of secrets, he is perpetually at odds with his traditionalist father, though he remains his most beloved child. As Jack tries to make peace with his father, he begins to forge an intense bond with his sister Glory, herself returning home with a broken heart and turbulent past. Home is a luminous and healing book about families, family secrets, and faith from one of America's most beloved and acclaimed authors.
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Community Reviews
This novel is set at the same time and place as Robinson's novel Gilead, but focuses almost entirely on the Boughton family: the aging and frail Reverend Boughton, youngest daughter Glory, who has come home at 38 to care for her father, and the 40-something prodigal son Jack, also home after a 20-year absence. Reverend Boughton and his son Jack are recurring characters in Gilead, so reading both offers a fuller portrait of these closely connected Midwestern preachers' families. (There is a third novel in this set, Lila, about the much-younger wife of the Reverend Ames, protagonist of Gilead, and which I have yet to read.)
This is a slow-paced story, but one that keeps your attention as the author peels layers and layers of mystery off the sad and lonely histories of both Glory and Jack, now unaccustomed to living together again for the first time since childhood, now each in caregiver roles to their father.
Jack's troubled past includes alcohol and prison, and in his return "Home" to Gilead he also seeks redemption from some of the mistakes and sins of his past, yet that redemption continues to elude him. At the same time, he longs for the woman he loves, Della, back in St. Louis, and is haunted by her refusal to answer his letters. Glory has also been disappointed in love and now faces the prospect of possibly being stuck in small Gilead perhaps forever as her father's caretaker and eventually as the sole inhabitant of the creaky old house she will inherit, as her other siblings aside from Jack are married and settled elsewhere.
The tension among the family members is usually on a low simmer but sometimes rises to spilling over: long-festering anger toward Jack over the child he Jack fathered while barely out of his teens and would not acknowledge; concern over Jack's apostasy, and resentment over his failure to come home even for his mother's funeral years before.
Robinson's mastery of language is beautiful, and her development of these finely accented characters is poignant and memorable.
This is a slow-paced story, but one that keeps your attention as the author peels layers and layers of mystery off the sad and lonely histories of both Glory and Jack, now unaccustomed to living together again for the first time since childhood, now each in caregiver roles to their father.
Jack's troubled past includes alcohol and prison, and in his return "Home" to Gilead he also seeks redemption from some of the mistakes and sins of his past, yet that redemption continues to elude him. At the same time, he longs for the woman he loves, Della, back in St. Louis, and is haunted by her refusal to answer his letters. Glory has also been disappointed in love and now faces the prospect of possibly being stuck in small Gilead perhaps forever as her father's caretaker and eventually as the sole inhabitant of the creaky old house she will inherit, as her other siblings aside from Jack are married and settled elsewhere.
The tension among the family members is usually on a low simmer but sometimes rises to spilling over: long-festering anger toward Jack over the child he Jack fathered while barely out of his teens and would not acknowledge; concern over Jack's apostasy, and resentment over his failure to come home even for his mother's funeral years before.
Robinson's mastery of language is beautiful, and her development of these finely accented characters is poignant and memorable.
So sad. A modern day interpretation of the prodigal son... with many twists and turns. Heartbreakingly realistic.
Marilynne Robinson is a genius, and I love her fiction. Unfortunately, this one is my least favorite. Gilead is the best book ever, and Lila is a close second. Home is another perspective on the same characters and the story is concurrent with Gilead. (Lila takes place before Gilead.) The problems are that I don't like anything I learn about the characters in this novel. The spiritual material- which Robinson excels at- is much less clear and less moving. And the relationship that develops between the brother and sister isn't as interesting and moving as the relationships that animate Housekeeping, Gilead, and Lila. Maybe I'm being unfair to the book because I'm comparing it to some of the best novels I've ever read, Robinson's other books.
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