“Home” by Marilynne Robinson
A companion to her Pulitzer-winning novel Gilead, Home is similar but different. Like Gilead, it is a thoughtful novel with lovely prose and complex characters actively seeking spiritual growth. If you’re interested in questions of faith and redemption, and if you liked Gilead, as I did in 2005 and 2007, you’ll probably like Home too. But vice versa. It is a slow, perhaps sometimes ponderous, read, often painful in its brutally honest characterizations of fallible, sad and aging people.
Home is about the return of Jack, prodigal* son of the Reverend Boughton, and namesake of John Ames, the narrator of Gilead. Similar events and characters are showed through different perspectives. I found Gilead framed around the eras of people’s experiences of God: thunderous revelation of the early Bible, quiet respect of the later Bible, and then theology in the absence of an immanent God. Home takes the progression to the next step in its examination of the flawed nature of humanity, and its characters wonder if grace is earned and whether predestination plays a role, or exists at all.
Jack and his sister Glory are deeply sympathetic characters, and reading Home made me want to reread Gilead to see the same events through Ames’s eyes. I was hurt, and moved, and buoyed as I read. Low on plot and action, this is not a book for everyone. But its still waters run deep, and it will linger long for those inclined to listen.
Home is up against Hari Kunzru’s My Revolutions, which I read and appreciated last year, this Wednesday, 3/18 in the 2009 Morning News Tournament of Books.
*NB: Prodigal means wasteful, not “someone who ran away and came back.”
March 17th, 2009 at 5:27 am
I lovedlovedloved Gilead.
I did not love this. Couldn’t even stay interested enough to finish.
March 17th, 2009 at 7:24 am
What did you think made the difference in your reaction to the books. Did you think they were very different?
March 19th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Both GIlead (and Housekeeping for that matter) had a very inviting conversational tone/style. From page 1, I was engaged and wanting to hear more.
Home felt very offputting, stiff and cold. Narration feels like someone on the outside looking in. Someone not emotionally involved in the story.
I don’t think it’s all a 1st person (Gilead, Housekeeping) vs. 3rd person (Home) narrative issue — because obviously there are many 3rd person narratives I have read and loved.
But in this case, it really made a difference to me. I didn’t feel connected to it, and I didn’t really feel like the author was either.
March 19th, 2009 at 10:02 am
The judge and commenters both seemed to feel similarly to you. Home is up against My Revolutions today. Both are good, I thought. I liked Home, but didn’t love it. Sorry, gotta go drag the boys off the buffet.