Home: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson
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Book Reviews of Home: A Novel
Book Review: Coming Home
Summary: 5 Stars
"What does it mean to come home?"
Marilynne Robinson poses the question and her book suggests how complex that wish may be. Jack, the prodigal son and favored child of the 8 children of a small town minister in Iowa in the mid 1950s returns home after a 20 year flight. He is an alcoholic and a self proclaimed thief, who has spent time in jail and seems to exist via " the kindness of strangers" as another book memorably posits, as well as odd jobs and kind women.
This is a book that freely uses words like perdition and scoundrel and amazingly it sounds perfect. Jack's father, now dying is cared for by the other central character, Glory, the youngest daughter. Now 38, she has come home after an 8 year engagement and years of teaching school. Her fiancé has left with her money and hopes.
If it all sounds grim and boring, don't buy the book. If you do, you will find yourself totally in the world of this house, and these people. Yet Robinson's gift, and it truly is a gift is that she takes the mundane and prosaic and enriches it with themes that are universal yet searingly specific to our lives today. Glory's attempts to connect with her brother are as touching and real as his retreat into irony to hide his searing pain.
Their father says to Jack "What I'd like to know, is why you didn't love us. That is what has always mystified me." And Glory reflects "Oh, it was the loneliness none of them could ever forget, that wry distance, as if there were injury for him in the fact that all of them were native to their life as he never could be."
Families, forgiveness, home and connections. Like her earlier book, Gilead, this is a book for the ages.
Book Review: Home is a story of family, father and son, brother, and sister
Summary: 5 Stars
Robinson won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel "Gilead." Here, she returns to those characters, in a story of the prodigal son. Gilead, Iowa is still the setting, but the characters move from John Ames' home and family, to that of his old friend, Robert
Boughton. Boughton, a former minister, like Ames, is dying, and his youngest daughter Glory has returned home to care for him. Glory's life has been successful on the surface, having earned her Master's Degree, and been a teacher for number of years, but feels unfulfilled. Her brother, Jack, the father's favorite, has returned home after a 20-year exile, having originally fled the town after getting a young girl pregnant. In his return, Jack's hoping for reconciliation with his father and trying to put his previous dissolute life behind him. Glory is conflicted over the return, wanting her father to end his life at peace with his son, yet concerned if Jack can maintain his new current behavior. Gilead was a novel of generations, following several members of the Ames family, from the Civil war into the 1950s. Home is a story of family, father and son, brother, and sister. Glory and Jack need to be able to share their stories with each other, and slowly they do. Robert and Jack find new common ground, reflecting both the reconciliation of the prodigal son with his father, but also what happens after the fatted calf is eaten, and father and son find a gap in their lives, experiences and expectations. A wonderful story; slow paced, emotionally moving. Robinson is a spectacular writer, and the dichotomy of the two novels shows her range in handling family relationships, over the generations and within one.
Book Review: As near perfect a companion...
Summary: 5 Stars
...to Gilead as one could hope for. And hope, it seems to me - hope realized, hope deferred, hope in spite of reality - is at the core of this book. I saw this book at an airport bookstore and as soon as I saw that it returned to Gilead (didn't even finish reading the jacket), I purchased it. However, it took me some time to open it, because frankly I was afraid that it might not be as good as Gilead, that something from the perfection of that book might be ruined in the attempt to return there.
I needn't have worried, nor should you, if you read and loved Gilead. The perfect ambiguity of Gilead's ending is preserved, and we learn more about all the characters that were most real to me - Robert, Glory, and Jack. We meet characters only alluded to previously, and what a wonder they are! As others have noted, it is a slow, deliberate novel - though certainly wordier and less spare than Gilead. But it is a slow, deliberate story, and one to take your time with.
And hope - we always return to it. What hope and wonder are displayed in this little book, even in the midst of alcoholism, depression, small-town drama, racial conflicts, dementia. Don't be confused, however, but it's not romantic, sentimental and syrupy hope. It is deeply, profoundly, faithful hope - more like what John Ames describes at the end of Gilead: "...whatever hope becomes after it begins to weary a little, then weary a little more." A good ending can make a novel, and this one casts a wonderful vision.
Book Review: Achingly Beautiful
Summary: 5 Stars
Marilynne Robinson's new novel, _Home_ is achingly beautiful. Every sentence counts. Every word seems to have been sifted and weighed. The characters are drawn with a refinement and finesse rarely seen in fiction. There's not much action, but each action is lovingly expressed, and contributes to rich characterization. The book is a minimalist masterpiece.
_Home_ is not a sequel to _Gilead_. Rather, both novels take place over much the same stretch of weeks and months in the 1950s in a small farm town (Gilead) in Iowa, and have the same main characters. But _Gilead_ is told in the narrative voice of the elderly-and-dying minister John Ames, writing to his seven year old son, born to him so late in life. _Home_, on the other hand, is written from the vantage of Glory (the 30-something daughter of Ames's dying best friend and fellow pastor, Robert Boughton), apparently defeated by life and misplaced love. Both novels tell the return of Robert Boughton's ne'er-do-well son, John Ames Boughton. The prodigal returns. But has he? John Ames Boughton is one of the most complex and strikingly developed characters in fiction. The two novels see this return in very different ways.
If you have read Robinson's 2004 _Gilead_, expect to have your heart broken and mended all over again with _Home_. If you have not read _Gilead_, then read both.
Book Review: Coming back HOME to Gilead
Summary: 5 Stars
Four years ago, I briefly inhabited Marilynne Robinson's small world of Gilead and was the better because of it. Now she returns her readers to Gilead with a new meditative novel that, I'm pleased to say, is just about every bit as good as its prequel.
Set in the mid 1950s, Glory, the youngest daughter of the Boughton clan, returns home after a failed relationship to care for her father, the aging patriarch. Not long after, the prodigal son Jack (of GIlead fame) also returns after a 20-year "time in the wilderness" and sister and brother form a compassionate albeit uneasy bond. The novel focuses strongly on the meaning of home: home as a distinct place, home as a member of a family or a church, and most of all, creating a spiritual home.
Home addresses the big themes in life: forgiveness, grace, hope, and faith. But it's at its best when it focuses on the small themes of day-to-day family living and forging a bond between siblings and an aging parent when life has not gone as expected. It also presents a snapshot of life in the 1950s, when our nation created rationalizations for mistreatment of people of color.
Those who have not had the joy of reading Gilead will still find this to be a cohesive novel but for those who have, the feeling is nothing less than of arriving back home.