Home: A Novel | Marilynne Robinson | Going home

Home: A Novel | Marilynne Robinson | He Lives Evil, Eh?

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Home: A Novel

	Home: A Novel Marilynne Robinson Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 33 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Hundreds of thousands were enthralled by the luminous voice of John Ames in Gilead, Marilynne Robinson?s Pulitzer Prize?winning novel. Home is an entirely independent, deeply affecting novel that takes place concurrently in the same locale, this time in the household of Reverend Robert Boughton, Ames?s closest friend. Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack?the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years?comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain. Jack is one of the great characters in recent literature. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold a job, he is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Boughton?s most beloved child. Brilliant, lovable, and wayward, Jack forges an intense bond with Glory and engages painfully with Ames, his godfather and namesake. Home is a moving and healing book about families, family secrets, and the passing of the generations, about love and death and faith. It is Robinson?s greatest work, an unforgettable embodiment of the deepest and most universal emotions.

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Going home - CD Audiobook review

I spent many years out to sea. Every time I went home the only thing that had changed was me. The people in my family, my friends all seemed to be stuck in the rut that they were when I left.

Home, the novel, is a great look into a family and all of the baggage and issues along with it. It at times is a happy book, but more often than not it touches at your heart and doesn't let go. It at times is about redemption and healing. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this book on the road as I was traveling. Very recommended!

He Lives Evil, Eh?

This novel succeeds admirably at several levels. First, it explores at least one basic theological question. Also, it illustrates that such questions are sometimes answered more successfully by lay persons than by clergy.

In addition, the novel portrays well the diminishing strength of an elderly parent and its differing effects on various members of the younger generation. And it provides fascinating insight into adult sibling relationships.

And, not at all least for this reader, it provides some moving nostalgia for a hymn-singing childhood. It is beside the point that such recollections are quite likely distorted and optimized memories of what for the older generation was a more disturbing time. As a matter of fact, perhaps that is one of the points.

The theological question which most intrigued this reader is finally put into words on page 225 of my edition: "Are there people who are simply born evil, live evil lives, and then go to hell?" As one might surmise upon seeing the question, the theories of John Calvin are treated occasionally in pursuing an elusive answer. To "live evil" would indeed provide an empirical and palindromic manifestation of Calvin's concept of man's total depravity.

It is unfortunate that author Robinson's skill and professionalism were not approached by those of her editors and her publisher. Annoying erroneous spellings survived, including one of the name of Larry Doby, the athlete who in 1947 became the first black baseball player in the American League, second only to Jackie Robinson in all of major-league baseball.

Also related to civil rights, one of the novel's undercurrent themes, is the attribution of Birmingham's infamous fire hoses to another Alabama city, Montgomery, which had managed to secure its own adverse reputation without resorting to those particular weapons. Birmingham's pleasure at not being remembered probably exceeds that of Larry "Dobie" for being remembered at all.

But compulsive nit-picking aside, "Home" is an important and significant work, and may well bring another major prize for Robinson.

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Rings very true to life

Everything in this novel rings true from the complex dynamic between a minister and his black sheep son right down to the last detail of life in a small town. I felt like I was there and knew this family. Certainly I have met such families for real in small town Iowa! Enjoyable read!

a reader

Although the book has much to recommend it, I didn't enjoy it. The only plot is human sadness.
The writing is finely crafted and the book offers gentle insights into the human condition and into the bonds of family. The character of Robert Boughton is nicely developed. He is presented as a thoughtful, loving, generous, flawed, occasionally demanding, aging man. His daughter Glory has returned to care for him as he slips toward his death. Her character is full of patience and regret, and I found her less nuanced, less convincing than her father. She is overshadowed by her brother Jack, who can't seem to escape his fate as the troublesome, difficult, and despairing prodigal son. He has always been his father's greatest worry. He gets the lion's share of attention because he is difficult. Although the book is beautifully written, it is overly long, the pace is slow, and the effect is one of pervasive melancholy.

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Touching, sad story of family and going home again

Isn't it so often the case that the wildest child is often the favored child? Marilynne Robinson gives us a story of elderly parents, adult children as caretakers, life in a small, conservative town, and the challenges of atoning for the actions of our youth.

Glory Boughton, in her 30s, unmarried and now unemployed, travels home to Gilead, Iowa, to take care of her aging father whose health is declining. She suffers her own losses silently and stoically as her father grieves for and yearns to see Jack, the wayward, difficult son who has disappeared from the family for years. When Jack shows up on the doorstep, these characters struggle with atonement, grief, depression, forgiveness, and self-hatred. Jack is the alcoholic who hasn't held one job for very long; Glory is the good daughter trying to keep peace in the family while nurturing Jack back to some semblance of emotional health.

Jack moves in and begins to force the family's property and home back into something resembling what he remembers from happier times. He tries to make himself smaller and unnoticed, all the while struggling with his own demons and the compulsion to escape through drink. Glory, meanwhile, mourns the loss of what she once imagined to be a happier, married life with a family of her own. "What have I done with my life?" Glory asks. "It is as if I had a dream of adult life and woke up from it, still here in my parents' house." Anyone who has truly had to return "home" again can probably relate to this on some level.

All the while these characters function within the values of 1950s small-town America (this almost seems like a different world now). They are, after all, the children of a prominent reverend, and their outward appearance and reputation in this small town takes precedence over their own needs to reach out for support and comfort. Jack and his father find that they are on opposite ends regarding politics and the heated racial relations affecting the country during that time, and Glory starts to put together small clues about Jack's life during the time he was away from the family.

Although Glory is the third-person narrator of this story, this story is about Jack and his struggles with his father and with his own fatherhood. All of the characters are focused more on their internal struggles and emotions, and the reader spends this time caught up in the internalizations of these characters - it is at times almost like they do not actually interact with each other as much as they "imagine" how they interact with each other.

Narrator Maggi-Meg Reed does a fine job overall, but her interpretation of some of the characters - especially Reverend Boughton - is somewhat off-putting, in my opinion. She makes this elderly man sound beyond elderly, bordering on ancient, and that voice was grating. Still, this is a worthy audiobook. I can't exactly say that I enjoyed it because this is a gut-wrenchingly emotional story, but Robinson's writing is superb, and it was so easy to fall into the narrative. This is a sad tale; Jack brings in some humor, but these characters have so many regrets, and that comes out time and again. I actually felt a bit drained by the end of this novel, but I recommend it to anyone who appreciates good narrative and solid story-telling.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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