Home

I was bored thru much of this story. It was a beautiful character study but went a little slow. But when I was finished with the book I was very glad I read it.

John James is the narrator of Gilead. He is the Congregationalist minister in Gilead, Iowa and we see him as serious, kind and wise. He seems almost perfect, but he has some imperfections he struggles with. The novel is actually a letter to his young son and we follow the dying man as he reflect on his life, philosophy, scripture and anything else that comes to mind and one of the things that comes to mind is the homecoming of his namesake -- John, called Jack, Boughton -- the son of his friend, Robert Boughton, who is the Presbyterian minister in Gilead. This is the same story retold, made more real, at least for me, because it's told in the third person point of view from the viewpoint of Robert Boughon's youngest daughter, Glory, who is also Jack's younger sister. Glory is an unmarried English teacher, who has come home to take care of her father, who is also old and ill. The ministers are close and so it's only fitting that these two books are as well. I love them both. John Ames Boughton, Jack, has returned after twenty years away. He'd been wicked and wild and Ames at times worries that Jack is paying two much attention to Lila, his young wife. But Jack isn't after Lila, he's got plenty on his mind to keep him occupied and if you've read Gilead before this, you'll know what, but it you haven't it won't be a shocker, because it's 2008, but either way you'll enjoy this book. I could just keep going, talking on and on about these two books, about how much I liked the writing, because it's just so divine. I must admit that I am wondering if Marilynn Robinson is planning a third novel about these events told from Jack's point of view. I know I'd be lining up to buy it.

As most readers of this review will know, Home is Marilynne Robinson's second novel set in Gilead, Iowa, in 1956. The first novel, Gilead, tells the story of John Ames, an elderly minister dying of a heart condition who decides to write an account of his life and kin for his seven-year-old son, Robby. The entire book is his letter to Robby, written over the course of a summer. As Rev. Ames writes, his namesake, John Ames Boughton (Jack), returns to Gilead after leaving many years earlier amidst scandal. Jack is the son of Robert Boughton, Rev. Ames's lifelong friend and fellow Gilead minister. While Gilead focuses on the Ames household, Home tells the story of the Boughton household. Rev. Boughton is a widower whose health is also declining. Glory, the youngest of his eight children, has just moved back home in the aftermath of a failed relationship. And Jack, his wayward son whom he has not seen in some 20 years, has come home troubled and looking for peace. The two novels unfold not in series but in parallel and offer many wonderful points of intersection. I loved both books. Gilead is the story of a good man whose interior life shines through his long letter to his son. Rev. Ames is utterly real in his sorrows and failings, but also in his quiet strength, steadfastness, and confidence in the Lord. As a young man he lost his first wife and daughter during childbirth, then endured many lonely years as a widowed minister. His main comforts were his books, his friendship with Robert Boughton, the seeming immutability of Gilead itself, and most of all his sense of God's presence permeating all of life. Late in his life, Lila came to his church. Although half his age, she was already wearied and wisened by life; it is implied that she had a sad and broken past. Through Rev. Ames, she came to faith and was baptized. They eventually married, but because of his propriety as a minister and his respect for the difference in their ages it was she who proposed to him: "You ought to marry me." Rev. Ames's long letter to Robby is in turns personal story, sensitive meditation, affectionate letter, and deep expression of concern for his family. He tells the stories of his grandfather and father, both ministers, but one a violent abolitionist and the other a pacifist. His feelings are palpable when he describes how fiercely he loves his life; when he wishes Robby knew him in his strength; when he tells Robby how much he means to him; when he describes the lonely years as a period for which he is grateful, but also a period which seems like "a long, bitter prayer that was answered finally;" when he wishes he had set more aside for Lila and Robby to live on after he is gone; and when he expresses both apprehensiveness that Jack may harm them and pastoral concern for Jack's troubled soul. If Gilead is about a good man, Home is about a troubled man. The one man's goodness and the other man's troubled life seem in no way related to their give

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.

How simple it seems, that story of the Prodigal Son! The wanderer returns; his joyful father falls on his shoulder and orders the fatted calf to be killed; the stay-at-home sibling is resentful for a while, but presumably learns to deal with it. For the story stops there. There is no tomorrow. The Bible doesn't ask what happens in the weeks and months after that. Is the family happily reunited? Does the Prodigal never yearn to be off again? Where does life go from here? These are some of the many questions posed by Marilynne Robinson in her latest novel, HOME, a sister work to her Pulitzer Prize-winning GILEAD. HOME is not a sequel to GILEAD, but a parallel novel, taking place in the same town (Gilead, Iowa), at exactly the same time (1956), and involving many of the same characters. Readers of the earlier novel will recall that the town has two elderly preachers, John Ames and Robert Boughton, close friends since childhood. In HOME, the action shifts from Ames' house to that of Boughton, a wonderful old man magnificently characterized through his way of talking, warmly benevolent with unexpected edges of granite. At the start of the book, his youngest daughter Glory, now 38, returns home to care for her father; she appears to be in retreat from problems of her own, but their nature only gradually becomes clear. A little later, Jack Boughton, the black sheep of the family, arrives after an absence of twenty years. Jack appears in GILEAD also; some of the information from the earlier book is revealed immediately, but we learn much more about his tormented life as the book goes on. One essential revelation from GILEAD is postponed to the very last pages of HOME, so that readers who come to this book first may find the ending even more moving. For Jack, with his mixture of outward charm and inner despair, becomes a character to care for. We follow his spiritual trajectory over the next few months first with hope, then with joy, then with sympathy. This is a sad book, but by no means a bleak one. Are there really two novels to be found in Gilead in 1956? Not quite; more like one and three-quarters. But this second book, though perhaps overlong, is entirely absorbing in its own right, and surprisingly different from its predecessor. GILEAD was a vertical book, having to do with four generations of fathers and sons, and with man's relationship to God; HOME is a horizontal one, focusing on the relationship between brother and sister, and the accumulation of memories, custom, and duties that make a home a home, whether a solace or a burden. GILEAD was broad in scope, reaching back to the Civil War and denying the apparent isolation of its characters in place and time; HOME turns inward, presenting the outside world merely as something lurking on the periphery. I was going to say that while GILEAD is primarily a religious work, HOME is a secular one, but that is not quite true; HOME does not quite have the luminous spirituality of GILEAD, yet GILEAD als

...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.