Home: A Novel

Maybe not perfect, because it did come to an end. This is truly one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. I read Gilead after Home, and found it equally as beautiful. It is a story set in a simpler time, when things like good behavior and honor mattered more. The things that set Jack so far apart from his family would not seem like such a big deal now.The relationship of Jack and Glory is skilfully written, and it is easy to feel her pain and hope. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

I was excited to see that this book had been released since I loved GILEAD so much. While I enjoyed HOME, I probably did not like it as much as it's predecessor.

Both books are very similar in tone and content (not surprising since they are parallel pieces to each other), but I found HOME to move at a much more slower pace then GILEAD and that's saying something considering how slowly placed GILEAD is. It took me several days to complete this book. That's not to say it's boring. It's not. It's just that I think there is a bit too much repetitiveness.

Still, I recommend HOME to anyone who loved GILEAD. Both books compliment each other very well. They are not plot driven stories, but beautifully written books about people.

This review refers to the audiobook.

It's a shame. The narrator sounds like she's narrating an episode of Dynasty. Breathy and melodramatic. Like a congested divorcee waving around a glass of wine while she talks about her teenage glory days in the Hamptons.

In other words, definitely not suited to this material.

In her Pulitzer Prize winner Gilead, named the #1 fiction book of 2004 by the New York Times, Marilynne Robinson told the story of Pastor John Ames, a fourth generation Congregationalist pastor in Gilead, Iowa. More exactly, she allowed Pastor Ames to tell his own story, for the book is a 240-page letter from the 76-year-old Ames to his seven-year-old son. In the letter Pastor Ames looks inwardly to untangle how his present reality in his old and feeble years relates to whatever constitutes Ultimate Reality. Parts of his letter also fret about "the beloved child of my oldest and dearest friend." That would be "Jack" (John) Boughton, son of Gilead's Presbyterian pastor, Robert Boughton, who is named after Ames himself.

In a parallel but independent story, Home takes us back to Gilead in the 1950s. Glory, age 38 and the youngest of eight Boughton children, has left her teaching job in Des Moines and returned to Gilead to care for her aged and feeble father, Robert. She's deeply lonely and never married, although we learn she does have a romantic past. As a good pastor's kid, she still reads her Bible, and since Robert is a widower, Glory takes charge of all things domestic. Without explanation, the black sheep of the family, Jack, returns home after a twenty year absence. Jack is 43, an alcoholic, a thief who has spent time in prison, a miscreant who fathered a child out of wedlock, and, worst of all for his loving father, a decided non-believer. But Jack knows the Scriptures better than most, he plays hymns for his father, and he has a broken heart for an unlikely woman who did him nothing but good. He's come home seeking reconciliation. But that is easier said than done.

The Bible's parable of the prodigal son is far neater than this family's story. "It's a powerful thing, family," says Robert (176). Indeed, it is, especially when your family is a pastor's family brimming with Presbyterian probity and earnestness, a family that is good in order to look good. "Such a wonderful family they were!" (7). But there are no villains in this story. Father Robert is tired, sad, and tirelessly tender; he falls asleep at dinner, succumbs to dementia, and is vexed at how and why Jack arrived at his sorry state. Glory is the peace keeper who moves between accepting people, trying to fix them, and enabling them. Jack is irony personified. These are lovable characters. They have secrets that define them, roles that have been assigned to them for decades, memories both pleasant and painful, all come together in a house full of family ghosts. "This life on earth is a strange business," says Glory (253). And so she prays at dinner what we all hope and pray, "Dear God in heaven, please help us. Dear God, please help everyone we love. Amen." (292).

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.