Home: A Novel

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"Home is a companion piece to Gilead, an account of the same time (the summer of 1956), in the same place (Gilead, Iowa), with the same cast of characters as the earlier novel. Each book is strengthened and deepened by a reading of the other . . . The two books, different in their form and approach as well as in the details they reveal and the stories they ultimately tell, are an enactment of humanity's broader dance of ever-attempted, ever-failing communication—through a glass darkly. This is not, of itself, a novel endeavor for the novel (Edith Wharton once wrote, with lyrical concise wit, 'I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story'); rather it is the gravitas and patience with which Robinson, whose 1998 book of essays The Death of Adam revealed her rigorous Christian spiritual inquiry, has, in these two novels, channeled that rigor in fictional form; the result is two works of art of impressively unfashionable seriousness and engagement . . . Robinson, throughout Home, is tackling almost the opposite of what she undertook in Gilead: rather than granting a direct and illuminated voice to a single, thoughtful soul, she stands back—writing in the third person, albeit in a third person that privileges Glory's point of view—and allows her characters to perform their small daily rituals, to have their conversations, to live through their misunderstandings, each in his or her particular isolation. Crucially, she allows at least very distinct experiences—that of the devout, to which John Ames, Robert Boughton, and even Glory could be said to belong; and Jack's secular universe—to interact with one another, each with its own language and its own jurisprudence . . . What is remarkable about Home—and why it is, to this reader, an even stronger accomplishment than its companion volume; not in spite of its longueurs and its repetitiveness but because of them—is that it is both a spiritual and a mundane accounting."—Claire Messud, The New York Review of Books

"Home is a book full of doubleness and paradox, at once serene and volcanic, ruthless and forgiving. It is an anguished pastoral, a tableau of decency and compassion that is also an angry and devastating indictment of moral cowardice and unrepentant, unacknowledged sin. It would be inaccurate to say that the novel represents yet another breathless exposé of religious hypocrisy, or a further excavation of the dark secrets that supposedly lurk beneath the placid surface of small-town life. When Robinson writes that 'complacency was consistent with the customs and manners of Presbyterian Gilead and was therefore assumed to be justified in every case,' she is not scoring an easy, sarcastic point. There is real kindness and generosity in the town, and its theological disposition is accordingly tolerant and charitable . . . Readers who come to Home after Gilead will know that during his 20-year exile Jack met a black woman and had a child with her. His return to Gilead is in part a reconnaissance mission, an attempt to discover if the town might be a suitable home for a mixed-race family. In 1956, there are 'no colored people in Gilead,' but it has not always been that way. They left after their church was burned, even though Ames remembers the arson as 'a little nuisance fire' that happened long ago. And Ames’s 'shabby old town' is a place where a black family is afraid to be out on the road when the sun goes down. These ugly facts complicate the beauty of Home, but the way Robinson embeds them in the novel is part of what makes it so beautiful. It is a book unsparing in its acknowl

What Customers Say About Home: A Novel:

The characters' lives are set, their roles in the family.their relationships with one another. Even if it's not fair to compare an author's current book to his/her previous one(s) - with the same characters in "Home", it's impossible not to.Where I found "Gilead" to be full of joy and simple wonder, "Home" is full of loss and regret and quiet but tortured grief. I remembered liking that book a great deal.but had to refresh my memory as to exactly why. Where in some cases home is the place where one can escape the world and be comforted and healed, this home re-opens the old wounds in ways that will never mend."Jack sat pondering his father, and there was something in his face more absolute than gentleness or compassion, something purged of all the words that might describe it.""Home" was like looking back on the past.a past that we've left behind but that these characters are trapped in. Where Glory, a 38-year old school teacher is seen as an old maid, life practically over, and where riding in a car is a major event. It seemed almost domestic, and yet there was a potency of loneliness about about it like a dark spirit, a soul that had improvised this crude tabernacle to stand in the place of other shelter, flesh."The characters live so close to one another, but they remain so far apart that the might as well be strangers.

Again, it's the same place, the same characters, but there's something so tightly closed off that the reader feels at arm's length from the emotions. Possibly it's because this book is in the third person, as opposed to "Gilead" - but there's something else. I suppose I'd consider the main character of "Home" to be Glory Boughton, although the focus of the book is her brother Jack.a fact not lost on Glory. Jack, the prodigal son, has returned home, as she has, to the last part of their father's life. I had to skim back over my review of "Gilead" before I wrote this review. Those questions had hung in the air for twenty years while everyone tried to ignore them, had tried to act as if their lives were of sufficient interest to distract them."The time period was interesting to me. The story takes place in the 1960's, but while the rest of the country is experiencing the civil rights movement - in this small Iowa town, it feels at times if it's the 1860's.

Robinson's descriptions of the town and the family home are so that one can practically smell the lemon wax and sun warmed wood."The room was filled with those things that seemed to exist so that children can be forbidden to touch them - porcelain windmills and pagodas and china dogs.""She saw him put his hand on the shoulder of their mother's chair, touch the fringe on a lampshade, as if to confirm for himself that the uncanny persistence of half-forgotten objects, all in their old places, was not some trick of the mind."There's a sense of hopelessness in "Home". That in a world where things are changing, sometimes faster than the world seems ready for, this town, this place, is stuck in time. Why did he leave. The feelings are just as real, but the intensity is so muted as to be almost subdued. No matter the fierce desire for reconciliation or recognition of past events.nothing seems to change.

The book focuses on Reverend Boughton's relationship with his most beloved and most troubled child, and almost as an aside, the struggle Glory has in dealing with being constantly on the sidelines of most of the relationships of her life."Her whole life long that house was either where Jack might not be or where he was not. Where had he gone. "The dark little room smelled strongly of whiskey and sweat. This gentle cage of home has bars that can be seen through, and sometimes reached through, but never escaped.At least not in life they won't.

Somehow, it seems to me to be extremely dull and blah. Rarely do I fail to finish a book, even if I don't like it. I don't care at all about the characters, who haven't come alive for me even a little bit, or really about anything to do with this book. This time I just can't force myself to keep going. I loved Gilead and Housekeeping, so was prepared to love this book as well. During my reading time I find other things that need doing just to avoid having to pick up this book again. I'm just going to throw in the towel and look for something better.

"Home" is my first read of Ms. I commend myself for not simply giving up. Robinson's work. And I must say it truly was an arduous task. Although I can appprecite an author's style/skill to stifle the reader's imagination by inching one's way to a climax, however the inching took hours and the climax was disappointing.I certainly felt the writer's plot had potential but somehow was lost in redundancy and peripheral details.There was a scene that was heartfelt and brought a tear to my eye; when the ailing father pleaded for his two sons to stand in front of him so that he could get a good look at them, merely because he loved them so much. And I'm sure that heart-felt moment was centered around a look back of my own ailing father's wishes before he passed.Reading comments of other reviews of this author's previous work, is the only reason I would give Gilead a chance because "Home", although a great title, did not impress me in the least.

Marilyn Robinson's first book GILEAD, won a Pulitzer Prize. This is her third book about the town of Gilead. It is beautifully written and questions the role of religion within the family and coming back home to your roots.

Marilynne Robinson's "Home" is hard to describe, but I'd say that it is more about emotional impact on the reader than enjoyment of story. Redemption is usually a favored theme for readers and here they must settle for forbearance or endurance, with no hint of something better in the future. The general theme of the prodigal's return is at the heart of the book. In this case though, the prodigal, though beloved by his family, is one of life's lost souls who cannot be redeemed completely.It's brave of author Robinson to create characters that ultimately do not triumph. For the prodigal son, Jack Broughton, the author offers no hope of redemption or happiness. Whether you enjoy this story or not, you can't help but be impressed by the spare beauty of Robinson's language that makes the scenes in an Iowa farmhouse come alive without embellishment or artifice.