Home: A Novel

Marilynne Robinson won the Pulitzer for her book GILEAD. I still haven't read GILEAD but I was anxious to read her follow-up, HOME, after reading several glowing reviews. HOME is a prodigal son story. It revisits several of the characters from GILEAD but it is not necessary to read GILEAD in order to understand the plot.

Prodigal Jack Boughton returns home after an extended absence to visit his ailing father and sister and tries to find some sort of redemption. The story is a quiet one that is very character-driven. For readers that crave fast-moving plots and lots of action, this would be a very difficult book to get through. However, it offers a great deal of reflection on religion and family and whether people can truly change. Extremely thoughtful if sometimes a bit slow.

I'm looking forward to reading GILEAD for a different perspective and viewpoint on this tale.

Tears come easily for Gloria for understandable reasons: 1) she's 38 years old, recovering from a long-term relationship that did not end well; 2) her father is dying, and 3) her long-lost brother has returned home.

I cried with her because I watched for almost ten years my brother cope with mental illness, which for a time resulted in homelessness and, to the devastation of my family, resulted ultimately in his suicide.

I cried with her as Jack struggled with his desire to reassure their father of his soul's salvation even as he knew the most he could admit to is that he was a seeker. I loved that Robinson did not neatly tie up the package in her ending in regards to faith issues.

My final tears could not help but come watching Rev. Boughton as he drew closer to the end. Glory may have annoyed some readers with all her tears, but I cried with her. Some of us just do.

This book doesn't need my review, which is five stars, but is merely a suggestion that looking to see who is the publisher of any book is likely to indicate its worth. FS&G is almost always reliable, as is Knopf - among the Big Names. I'm not going to list the less likely to be superior publishers - we're in an age where good literature isn't much appreciated and doesn't bring in the big bucks. That's just a fact. So when one finds a writer of such quality, it's something to shout about - so I'm shouting.

I was very disappointed in Home. Very slow and almost boring. I read the reviews prior to purchasing this book and most were favorable. Sorry, but I did not think so. I did finish it but it felt like a struggle!

I absolutely adored Robinson's previous novel, Gilead -- thoughtful, thought-provoking, slow moving in a wonderful, wistful, fulfilling way. Home, which is set at the same time and with the same characters as Gilead, just told from a different perspective, is a disappointment. The main character, Glory, can't hold a candle to the narrator of Gilead, John Ames. Robinson seems to have lost her voice with this novel, or maybe she couldn't find a voice for Glory, who seems not well defined and thus not very interesting. Jack is by far the most interesting character, but he was more frustrating than sympathetic. The slow pace and thin plot, which worked wonderfully in Gilead and actually made that book the excellent piece of literature that it is, are a hinderance to this book. The pacing feels forced and some of the scenes are excruciating with their simplistic dialogue. Read Gilead and savor that -- but Home can be skipped.