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A review by matthewcpeck
Home by Marilynne Robinson
4.0
'Home' is, as per James Wood, the 'brother' to its predecessor 'Gilead', telling the story of the fictional Iowa town's other main ministerial family during the same period of time. Each novel complements the other, with scenes and conversations that are only hinted at in one book being fully played out in its counterpart.
While 'Gilead' took the form of a series of remarkably convincing letters, though, 'Home' is styled as a conventional third-person narrative - albeit without chapters - from the viewpoint of Glory Boughton, who's left her teaching job and a failed engagement to care for her ailing, widowed, father, the retired Reverend Robert Boughton. Glory and her father receive a surprise guest - Glory's long-absent, ne'er-do-well older brother Jack, Rev. Ames's spiritual nemesis in 'Gilead'. In terms of plotting, this is about as complicated as 'Home' gets. This is a book that manages the tricky business of deriving its suspense from people trying to better themselves, instead of from violence and shock (with few exceptions). Jack is the not-so-secret shame of the Boughton family, a former juvenile delinquent turned alcoholic transient and occasional thief, and he covers his pain in layers of irony and distance. He's all too aware of his reputation and the years of emotional stress wreaked upon his father, now at his most physically and mentally fragile - the worst incident being the death of a neglected child that the young Jack fathered with an impoverished teenage girl. And caught in the middle of this quiet war is the sensitive Glory, who finds a closeness with Jack that she's never felt before.
Marilynne Robinson's first two novels are pretty much perfect, with some of the most transcendently beautiful prose I've ever read. 'Home' is more austere, and it's a very slow build of a book. For the first two thirds, it can be...well, I hate to use the word, but it's almost boring, and lacking in the glorious runs of poetical paragraphs that fill 'Housekeeping' and 'Gilead'. Also, am I the only reader to be bothered by the strange, mechanical overuse of 'he laughed' and 'she laughed' throughout every single conversation in the novel? But the last quarter-to-third of 'Home' is like floodgates opening, with a rush of amazing technique and emotional impact. It's well worth some of the earlier rigors, and shows why Robinson is the master that she is. Looking forward to 'Lila'.
While 'Gilead' took the form of a series of remarkably convincing letters, though, 'Home' is styled as a conventional third-person narrative - albeit without chapters - from the viewpoint of Glory Boughton, who's left her teaching job and a failed engagement to care for her ailing, widowed, father, the retired Reverend Robert Boughton. Glory and her father receive a surprise guest - Glory's long-absent, ne'er-do-well older brother Jack, Rev. Ames's spiritual nemesis in 'Gilead'. In terms of plotting, this is about as complicated as 'Home' gets. This is a book that manages the tricky business of deriving its suspense from people trying to better themselves, instead of from violence and shock (with few exceptions). Jack is the not-so-secret shame of the Boughton family, a former juvenile delinquent turned alcoholic transient and occasional thief, and he covers his pain in layers of irony and distance. He's all too aware of his reputation and the years of emotional stress wreaked upon his father, now at his most physically and mentally fragile - the worst incident being the death of a neglected child that the young Jack fathered with an impoverished teenage girl. And caught in the middle of this quiet war is the sensitive Glory, who finds a closeness with Jack that she's never felt before.
Marilynne Robinson's first two novels are pretty much perfect, with some of the most transcendently beautiful prose I've ever read. 'Home' is more austere, and it's a very slow build of a book. For the first two thirds, it can be...well, I hate to use the word, but it's almost boring, and lacking in the glorious runs of poetical paragraphs that fill 'Housekeeping' and 'Gilead'. Also, am I the only reader to be bothered by the strange, mechanical overuse of 'he laughed' and 'she laughed' throughout every single conversation in the novel? But the last quarter-to-third of 'Home' is like floodgates opening, with a rush of amazing technique and emotional impact. It's well worth some of the earlier rigors, and shows why Robinson is the master that she is. Looking forward to 'Lila'.