Home: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson
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Book Reviews of Home: A Novel
Book Review: The Balm for Failure: a Fugue
Summary: 5 Stars
Marilynne Robinson is a writer of great intellectual daring and great control. To have risked all she had won on Gilead by returning to the characters and places she already has used, and to place it all again on a bet that Christianity and traditional family structure will speak to us today: it is an act of moral courage. Readers of her very demanding essays will find here (as in Gilead) a light touch with language, but it is light - never light-weight - for a purpose, which is to both present and support her theme in ways that are intreernally consistent with her characters.
Much has been made in other reviews of the theme of the Prodigal Son. But both Gilead and Home deal with sons and fathers in many ways, moving back and forth in variations on the theme [father-son; grandfather-father; grandfather-grandson; stepfather-stepson; and now brother-sister and finally brother-brother, which always must be about the father, too]. Sometimes looking at the Prodigal Son, yes; but sometimes at Abraham and Isaac, searingly in Home at Hagar and Ishmael; implicitly to God the Father and God the Son. Back and forth go the theme, with intermittent episodes that tie them together, often through the words of the Bible. As another reviewer here has written: vertically (over time)in Gilead, horizontally (through characters here); first person and memoirist (is that memory tobe trusted?) in Gilead; third person omniscient (but not omniscient enough to save her brother) in Home. Surely it is the fugue structure, and done with the lightness and grace of the masters.
But what is the resolution? Ms. Robinson may not be done with us yet, of course, but I think she is pointing the way, much more clearly in Home than in Gilead. In her own words (from her eassay, "Family", in The Death of Adam:
"The antidote to fear, distrust, self-interest is always loyalty. The balm for failure or weakness, even for disloyalty, is always loyalty." [Picador, NY: p.89]
Or, as she says early on in Home [FSG, NY: p 45], Glory speaking of her father,
"If you forgive, he [the Rev. Robert Boughton] would say, you may indeed still not understand, but you will be ready to understand, and that is the posture of grace."
So, consider again the Rev. John Ames giving Jack the Aaronic blessing at the end of Gilead- a scene not, of course, repeated here - and the final, luminous words of Home, raising the theme yet one more time through Jack's son, Robert:
"[H]e has answered his father's prayers.
"The Lord is wonderful."
Marilynne Robinson's writing, including her courage in having a point of view we see very little today, is a grace, too.
Mark J. Logsdon
Aptos, CA 95003
Book Review: Can You Go Home Again?
Summary: 5 Stars
When Glory Boughton returns home to Gilead to care for her ailing father, she carries with her the regrets and fantasies of a life of her own - now abandoned. But soon after her return to the old homestead, her prodigal brother Jack writes a letter, announcing that he, too, is on his way home.
After more than twenty years gone, she barely recognizes him - and a part of her resents his return, coming as it does at a time when the old man needs this connection so badly. But as time passes, she and Jack come to a deeper understanding of each other, revealing some of their own secrets that neither is eager to share with anyone.
Caring for their father together, fixing up the old homestead, which has become quite neglected in the past few years, they seemingly form a team...Protecting each other against the harshness of the life here, which remains the same, with the Reverend Ames sitting in judgment and the town folk glancing sidelong at Jack as if they half-expect him to steal from them...This is the reputation Jack once held, and his twenty-year abandonment of the family and any ties to this community, somehow reinforces this view. And Jack, self-deprecatory and doing nothing to eradicate the image the townspeople hold of him, continues in his quiet way to try to make some kind of amends - on the home front and with the minister. Their father, too, a former minister, holds many beliefs that cast someone like Jack in a "sinner" role.
Slowly, the author peels away the layers that conceal the sadness and loss carried by these two, as they walk along the old familiar paths in the town and as they fall into the humble patterns of their youth in this home that is filled with memories of a time long ago...
Dreams and loves and fantasies have been cast aside. In many ways, it seems as if these two people are sacrificing some other life to be here, caring for the old man, who barely recognizes them at times. And as the days and weeks pass, it becomes clear that, despite the moments of reconnection, time has not healed all the old wounds and the future is not what they expected...
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gilead: A Novel comes Home: A Novel, Ms. Robinson's latest triumphant chronicle of the homey things that conjure up memories of long-ago times.
Book Review: A Great American Novel
Summary: 5 Stars
How Fiction Works
Marilynne Robinson's "Home" is an extraordinary novel, a great novel, in the tradition of Hawthorne and
Melville and Faulkner. It is a very different sort of novel, in fact one critic really just dismissed it, but it could and will stand with the work of these earlier writers. It is a study of those who have remained in or returned to small town America; namely the Boughton family, and to a lesser degree than in the earlier "Gilead" the Ames family. The novel takes place in the summer in Gilead in Iowa where the days unfold in the old Boughton house in a fifties world where church is at the heart of the matter, where one knows what the neighbors are up to, where the coffee comes from the pot on the stove and there are dumplings with the chicken dinner, where there are no blacks on the streets. Jack Boughton returns after a twenty years absence to the house where his sister Glory has come to take care of her father, the "old man," a minister, who has, like many approaching death, a lot he wishes to settle. Here in the old house, a wonderful house with garden, and barn, and great shade trees, and of course their memories of childhood, Jack and Glory and their father manage to get through the days that proceed one after another as though nothing has happened, as though nothing will. And yet the reader cannot rest. Little by little, here and there, secrets are revealed, bits of the past are brought forward, like so many doors opening a crack, then closing. I don't think I have ever read a novel in which so much is said but one feels so few words have been spoken, where so much heartbreak has been recorded in a strange sort of stillness. Robinson writes about familial love, forgiveness, betrayal, guilt, an awful kind of lifelong estrangement, and such loneliness and disappointment. She looks at the wounds, and in an odd way manages to create in the reader a sense of having been wounded too. But then at the very end of the novel Jack gone, his father a day or so from death, we are left with Glory, looking down the road into the dusk, still believing, as do we, that good may come. It is a novel that is totally original, with deep deep roots in the history of American literature.
Book Review: He Lives Evil, Eh?
Summary: 5 Stars
This novel succeeds admirably at several levels. First, it explores at least one basic theological question. Also, it illustrates that such questions are sometimes answered more successfully by lay persons than by clergy.
In addition, the novel portrays well the diminishing strength of an elderly parent and its differing effects on various members of the younger generation. And it provides fascinating insight into adult sibling relationships.
And, not at all least for this reader, it provides some moving nostalgia for a hymn-singing childhood. It is beside the point that such recollections are quite likely distorted and optimized memories of what for the older generation was a more disturbing time. As a matter of fact, perhaps that is one of the points.
The theological question which most intrigued this reader is finally put into words on page 225 of my edition: "Are there people who are simply born evil, live evil lives, and then go to hell?" As one might surmise upon seeing the question, the theories of John Calvin are treated occasionally in pursuing an elusive answer. To "live evil" would indeed provide an empirical and palindromic manifestation of Calvin's concept of man's total depravity.
It is unfortunate that author Robinson's skill and professionalism were not approached by those of her editors and her publisher. Annoying erroneous spellings survived, including one of the name of Larry Doby, the athlete who in 1947 became the first black baseball player in the American League, second only to Jackie Robinson in all of major-league baseball.
Also related to civil rights, one of the novel's undercurrent themes, is the attribution of Birmingham's infamous fire hoses to another Alabama city, Montgomery, which had managed to secure its own adverse reputation without resorting to those particular weapons. Birmingham's pleasure at not being remembered probably exceeds that of Larry "Dobie" for being remembered at all.
But compulsive nit-picking aside, "Home" is an important and significant work, and may well bring another major prize for Robinson.
Book Review: if you loved GILEAD.....
Summary: 5 Stars
You will adore HOME. Fans of Robinson's Pulitzer Prize winning novel GILEAD fell in love with her gentle minister, the Rev. John Ames, and the story he was creating for his son. Set in the 1950's, GILEAD is a love letter from the 77 year old Ames to his 7 year-old son. This luminous, tender book was completely outside the realm of what some might expect from a modern best-selling novel. Robinson shattered the mold with GILEAD.
In HOME, Robinson takes readers back once again to this quite Iowa town. It is still the 1950's. John Ames still has a bad heart. But he's alive and enjoying life with his young wife and child. HOME is not a sequel. It's more of a companion volume to GILEAD and while reading the first book first would certainly enhance the reader's appreciation for HOME, doing so is not essential.
HOME is a story about the best friend of John Ames, the Rev. Robert Boughton, and his family. John Ames is definitely part of the story but in a more peripheral sense. These two elderly ministers grew up together. They have argued scriptural fine points for the better part of a century. Rev. Boughton's health is failing now too, much faster that his friend's is declining.
Rev. Boughton's 38 year-old daughter Glory has come home to care for her father. Boughton has been a widower for 10 years. The Boughtons had seven children. Rev. Boughton's favorite child, Jack, is the black sheep of the family. He hasn't been home in 20 years. As the story opens they have just heard that Jack is coming home for a visit with his ailing father.
The prodigal son finally turns up. Jack is a man with a mysterious past. He is also one of the most compelling fictional characters this reviewer has encountered in years.
Robinson spins her magic as father, brother, and sister play out the drama of this homecoming. HOME is pure gold. Robinson writes with a warmth and assurance that will bring tears to your eyes. Will this one win another Pulitzer? It's good enough. Time will tell. HOME will resonate with readers who understand the joys and sorrows of being part of a family.