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 … 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.
Home is a 2008 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction.
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One of the best books I’ve every read–in fact, as soon as I finished, I started from the beginning. It was even better the second time through.
I have no words. I feel inadequate to write a review for this treatise on life in the fifties, family dynamics, and going home. Many emotions were stirred up as I read this novel. A favorite author of mine recommended it; otherwise, I would have never known about it. I will now read, “Gilead”. I am sure I will be blown away by that one as …
What must it be like to be the black sheep in a minister’s family, to struggle with innuendos, might have beens, asking why. Jack. And his sister Glory who tries to welcome him home, but who has issues of her own. The story is more tedious that Gilead, but then I suppose living in a dark place much of the time is also tedious.
A companion piece to Pulitzer Prize winning Gilead. You can’t easily understand what argument she’s making unless you’ve read Gilead first. I’d recommend it because it’s a window onto that other world that is only hinted at in Gilead, but is a story that is real and important.
Home is Robinson’s supplemental novel to Gilead, and it proves to be every bit as splendid as its predecessor with its heartrending characters, beautiful composition, and thought-provoking ideas. Robinson chooses to continue exploring one of the most interesting characters from Gilead. Jack Boughton is the wayward son of Pastor Robert Boughton, …