Home: A Novel (original 2008; edition 2009)

A novel about the hypocrisy of a self-satisfied, sanctimonious, righteous father who does not slaughter the fatted calf when his long lost son at last comes home, but instead showers him with his bile and resentment. Not many reviewers see this book that way, but I do. See, I am Jack. I am lost, and need to be found. I am not simply evil, or malicious. I take no joy in my pain, nor the pain I cause you. Jack's father, the preacher, has lived a life of pre-provided answers and ease. He fails his test to help his son, to be a Christian. His sister Glory reaches out to him, and he begins to respond to love. But the old man keeps sticking the knife in and twisting it, refusing to let go of the past, to forgive.

This book breaks a few of the rules beginning writers are taught. 1. Show, don't tell. 2. The protagonist must change by the story's end. Only a writer this talented could get away with breaking rule 1. As for the second, since no one changes, we are left with a polemic, a moral lesson, and a very long one at that. If that was Robinson's purpose here, a short story of thirty pages or so could've done the job. The book was at least 100 pages too long, and really needed some more variety in the "beats". Drinking coffee, "laughing," laying down for a rest...it got old and almost silly after awhile. They must have drunk 50 gallons of coffee in this book.

Highly over-rated book, in my opinion. It's high-toned intelligence may have awed many, I suppose. How else to explain writers like this and Smiley? I'd like to see Robinson tackle a book with real scenes, with people acting real, and not just writing exposition for page after page. Show us what you got. ( )

Prodigal son Jack Boughton returns to Gilead in this, the second of Marilynne Robinson's spiritual novels about Gilead, Iowa. It is set in the 1950's and is a domestic tale of minutely observed interactions between alcoholic Jack, his dying father, and his sensitive sister. It is beautifully written and worth reading just to delight in some of the prose. It explores spiritual and religious themes. However it is largely a tale about the life of an incorrigible misfit and the desperation of both those who love him and himself. And despite a valiant attempt at a bittersweet ending I was left with a melancholic sadness upon turning the last page. A sense of sadness more intense because of the excellent way the tale is told. There was an inevitability about the tale but that was the whole point of it I think - we are who we are; inevitably condemned by that fact and the only saving grace is love. But what if that love is misplaced or too hard to accept? A great work of prose but not a cheery one. ( )

Jack Boughton is coming home. He's always been the odd one out in a large family, yet his father, Reverend Boughton, and the rest of the family couldn't help but love him and worry about him. Now, after twenty years' absence, he returns to Gilead and his father and his youngest sister, Glory, who has also returned home and is now caring for their aging father.

Many of the events of this story are also told in the companion book, Gilead. This is primarily from Glory's perspective, however, and the portrait of Jack is rather different if no less poignant. Your heart breaks for the boy - and man - who feels that he is past all redemption, who expects that behind every loving word is a rebuke. The brother-sister dynamics between Jack and Glory as they dance around and try not to insult each other is spot on. I couldn't help but compare and contrast this story with the parable of the prodigal son, though exactly who is the prodigal in Home could keep a conversation going for a long time. ( )

Upon the return of his son, Jack, from a 20-year absence, Robert Boughton, the patriarch of the Boughton family, finds with some surprise and considerable anger, that he has become old and frail. He has worked his whole life to build a home for his children, especially for his wayward son, and he's finally realizing that home isn't a place where children stay; it's a place children leave.

"All of them call it home, but they never stay," he laments.

Glory and Jack, who have both returned home to try and make themselves whole again, are discovering something similar. Home isn't a place where one can make oneself new; instead it's a place where one reverts back to childhood habits and relationships without even meaning to. It's a place of waiting and hoping but not of changing. To change, one must leave. And even then, the prospects for change are limited.

Robinson interwove this book beautifully with her incredible (and Pullitzer Prize-winning) Gilead. I was delighted (in kind of a dark way) with how my opinion of Jack changed in reading this book and seeing Glory's view of him from the opinion I held of him seeing only Reverend Ames' impressions of him in Gilead. Throughout most of this book, I really, really didn't like Jack. He's very manipulative and selfish. He calculates all of his actions based on how others will think of him or how he assumes they do think of him. "Truth" is a relative term to him. The nature of personal possession is similarly slippery in his estimation. He seems incapable of imagining that anyone could have a motive that doesn't relate to him. Throughout his life, he's refused closeness and comfort while condemning those around him for being distant. He makes choices that are almost guaranteed to result in failure, and then he uses the inevitable failure as further proof that he can accomplish nothing. And he pulls his family, especially his sister and his father, along with him, all the while insisting that he doesn't want their concern or their love.

He's just a jerk.

But he's also this very tragic character for whom I can't help but root even as he seems bent on failing, no matter what.

Glory, Jack's sister, still the "baby" of the large family although 38 years old, still loves her brother and seeks his approval just as she did when she was five. She tries to anticipate his needs, she lights up when something she says makes Jack laugh and is despondent when he's upset. She's something of an enabler. She's pitiful in her own way, but at least she's self-reflective. She knows she's pitiful, and she chooses to allow herself to be hurt rather than lose the tenuous connection she has with Jack.

With my description of the book as being about a jerk, an enabler, and an old man mired in self pity, this doesn't sound like a terribly glowing review. Home admittedly is heart-rending and frustrating. But it's also delicately and expertly written. And most of all it's True in the capital-T sense of the word. I was thoroughly engrossed. This, I thought, is how families work. I have the sense that I can get insights about my own familial relationships reading Robinson's work and perhaps grow more adept at recognizing the beauty in those relationships rather than only seeing the hassles and disappointments. ( )

I listened to this as an audiobook 10 CDs long. By the time I got to the 10th CD I was ready to take a shot gun to Jack. I thought if this passive-aggressive, apologetically malicious alcoholic said "I'm sorry" one more time, I'd have to throw something. Fortunately I was listening at the dog park, so I had ready made objects to throw for my very appreciative dogs. Marilynne Robinson reminds me why I would never want to work with substance abusers. Oh, my, the poor-little-lost-boy, if-only-someone-loved-you-enough-you'd-get-better shtick got very old. Kudos to anyone who can devote their lives to working with or loving such people. I saw Jack as just as malicious as Kevin in We Need to Talk About Kevin or Joey Garza in Streets of Laredo. He just didn't use a gun or a knife to hurt the people who loved him, and he rather enjoyed hurting himself as much as he hurt them, just as long as someone noticed. ( )