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Home: A Novel
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$25.00
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| Part No: | 0374299102 |
| Manufacturer: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| MFG Part: | |
| Customer Rating: | 4.0 / 5.0 |
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| Return of the Prodigal | 2010-07-16 | 5 / 5 |
| It is 1957 and after being away two decades Jack Boughton comes home, showing up on the back porch, thin and wearing a brown suit, "tapping his hat against his pant leg as if he could not make up his mind whether to knock on the glass or turn the knob or simply to leave again." He doesn't leave.
The prodigal's return is the major focal point of Marilynn Robinson's Masterpiece GILEAD, written twenty years after her first novel HOUSEKEEPING. Fortunately it's only been four years since GILEAD. Maybe she was able to shave sixteen years off this one, because it's a retelling of the last one, but from a different person's point of view.
Still, the novel has to live by itself, in my opinion anyway, and in my opinion this one does. There's not a lot of action, in fact other than a ride in a car, there isn't any at all, but there is wonderful writing. In Gilead we saw the story from the Rev. John Ames point of view in the form of a letter he was writing to his young son Robby, to be read after his death. John doesn't view Jack's return or Jack himself in nearly the same light as his younger sister Glory. This novel is told in the third person and it's told from Glory's point of view.
It goes without saying that people are going to compare the two books. Heck, how could you not? Do you need to read this if you've read Gilead? Well, if you liked Gilead you need to. This is a beautifully told story of the return of a prodigal son. There are problems and conflicts and unlike in a lot of stories, they don't all get resolved. That's all part of the beauty of this beautiful book. |
| Just Beautiful | 2010-07-07 | 5 / 5 |
| It's been four years since I read GILEAD, but this book took me immediately back to that small town in Iowa, back to the 1950s, back to a place I really enjoyed and I'm happy to say, I enjoyed it again, just as much as I did back then.
This is the same story, told from Glory's point of view. If you remember, she was the Reverend Robert Boughton's youngest daughter. She's come home to GILEAD to take care of her ailing father. Her brother Jack has come home as well and, it seems, Glory can't help but take care of him too, to the extent that he'll let her.
Glory has a shameful secret, she's been living in sin, lying to the world, saying she's been married. Jack as some secrets as well, maybe even more shameful, considering the times. And it's their secrets and how they wrestle with them that is the heart of this story. And there is the pleasure of seeing Jack and Glory reconnect, that's a good reason alone for reading this book.
Jack, the black sheep turned prodigal, has been away for two decades. Reverend Boughton seems very happy that his son has returned, but he seems unable to understand him. Though he talks of forgiveness, he can't shake how he feels. These three share the dinner table, they're family, but they're clearly uncomfortable with each other. It's not what they want it, it's way is.
This book belongs on your shelf next to GILEAD. Now, after having finished HOME, I don't see how they can be separated. These books both complete and complement each other and it makes not one bit of difference which one you read first, just so long as you go straight to the other one as soon as you finish the one you started first. |
| a book to give | 2010-07-03 | 5 / 5 |
| | I loved this book when I read it last fall. I had enjoyed Housekeeping and Gilead immensely but they were about some other person's family. Home was trus to my sense of my family. Home had growing older,approaching death after a full life, great disappointment and the enormity of the responsibility of being human. I have been waiting for this book to come out in paperback so I could share it with my friends who love beautiful writing, thoughtfulness and challenge. I would compare this book to Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner. They are both adult books. |
| Robinson's pieties wear thin | 2010-06-17 | 2 / 5 |
| Poor Jack - I fear I would also be a truant, scoundrel and alcoholic if I grew up nested amidst so much piety, the likes of which do not seem to come under Robinson's scrutiny. This is book tedious and depressing, for the most part, and I am not convinced by the glowing reviews.
Clearly the prodigal son subject to scrutiny in this text remains a mystery to its author, whose terminal sense of "estrangement" since early childhood from everyone around him seems to be diagnosed as a failure of faith in the religion his siblings and pastor father reverentially share. This fundamental estrangement from religious conviction, suggests Robinson, accounts for the tragic fall of Jack, the good and long suffering reverend's alcoholic son, but I found myself itching for a good stiff drink right along with him 100 pages in.
Claustrophobic and strangely unimaginative, this book lacks empathy, I believe, for the only interesting character in it. |
| Slow and arduous | 2010-06-12 | 2 / 5 |
| | I felt this novel was poorly written. The simple language and dialogue style would have been adequate if there had been more indirect character development. As it was published, Robinson merely tells and tells and tells about the characters. There is so little meaningful action or conversation the novel truly seems endless. I had to force myself to finish it and at the end felt that the novel had little purpose. There were many opportunities for redemption (of the characters and the writing, mind you): delving more into the reconciliation between Ames and Jack, between Boughton and Ames, perhaps Glory asking her father for his forgiveness as she had also sinned, a change in Jack for the better...true redemption, the introduction of Jack's wife and the acceptance of her by a prejudiced family over time, Jack's wife and son being a catalyst for his change, really tackling the concept of predestination that was toyed with in the novel, etc. All of this was overlooked and the novel was truly lacking. It was a disappointment. |
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