I finished reading Home about a month ago, but waited some time to write anything about it, in order to let the themes and the story settle. It is a companion novel to Gilead, which I read about a year ago. Unlike other reviewers, I didn't re-read Gilead (which I loved), so I had some memories of the parallel story, but the details are hazy.
Home details the final weeks of the life of the Reverand Boughton. His youngest daughter, Glory, has returned to the family home after a failed relationship in which she was very much the victim. Once an independent and ambitious young woman, now she is in her late 30s with no hope but to remain a spinster for the rest of her days in the crypt that is her family home.
However, the story is not so much about Glory, but about her bother, Jack. Referred to as the prodigal son, in fact he is very far from this figure. The prodigal returned home contrite and willing to make amends, to change his wicked lifestyle. He is welcomed by his father, who rejoices to have his lost son back at home. His brother is jealous of the celebrations, but the parable is essentially one of unconditional love.
Jack's return to the family home, on the other hand, results in unease rather than joy. His father is certainly delighted to have his son back but knows that the situation is only temporary. Jack, while possible full of remorse, is not contrite. He is unable to accept forgiveness and does not believe that it is possible to change, however much he might want to.
The result is a very sad book with an inevitable ending. Beautifully written, it provokes a sense of intense unease. ( )

I had checked out Home when it first came out but turned it quickly back when, thinking it was too much like Gilead. The reviews for Home continued to pour in and all of them were good. So I went back to it. And loved it. Robinson knows the Prodigal Son. ( )

Come home, come home,
You who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home!
Traditional Hymn

Home by Marilynne Robinson reworks the story she told in the novel Gilead from another character’s perspective. Gilead was written in the form of a journal narrated by Reverend John Ames, a minister in the small Iowa town of Gilead in the 1950’s. Reverend Ames, older with a weak heart, reflects on his life, the tumultuous relationship between his father and grandfather during the years preceding the Civil War, and most poignantly, on the unexpected blessings of a young and loving wife and son late in life. The tension in Gilead comes in the character of Jack Boughton, the wayward and difficult son of John Ames’s friend since boyhood, Reverend Robert Boughton. Home tells the story of Jack Boughton from the viewpoint of Glory, Reverend Boughton’s youngest daughter. Glory, after leaving home and teaching for many years, has returned home to Gilead to care for her elderly father. Jack, after a twenty years’ absence, has also finally returned home. The story now centers on Reverend Boughton’s household. Jack ~ though once gifted, charming, and well loved ~ has lived a life separate and alone from family and larger society. Jack is rueful, secretive, and alcoholic. His prodigal return and expected sudden departure to a family that love him with a fierce tenderness form the narrative of the story. In the end, as in life, much remains unanswered, unclear, and unresolved. Gilead was about appreciating God’s blessings. Home is about finding peace when failure and disappointment result despite our prayers. In both the novels Gilead and Home, Marilynne Robinson’s prose and insight continue to be remarkable. ( )

I had to skim back over my review of “Gilead” before I wrote this review. I remembered liking that book a great deal...but had to refresh my memory as to exactly why. Even if it's not fair to compare an author's current book to his/her previous one(s) – with the same characters in “Home”, it's impossible not to.

Where I found “Gilead” to be full of joy and simple wonder, “Home” is full of loss and regret and quiet but tortured grief. The feelings are just as real, but the intensity is so muted as to be almost subdued. Possibly it's because this book is in the third person, as opposed to “Gilead” - but there's something else. Again, it's the same place, the same characters, but there's something so tightly closed off that the reader feels at arm's length from the emotions.

I suppose I'd consider the main character of “Home” to be Glory Boughton, although the focus of the book is her brother Jack...a fact not lost on Glory. Jack, the prodigal son, has returned home, as she has, to the last part of their father's life. The book focuses on Reverend Boughton's relationship with his most beloved and most troubled child, and almost as an aside, the struggle Glory has in dealing with being constantly on the sidelines of most of the relationships of her life.

“Her whole life long that house was either where Jack might not be or where he was not. Why did he leave? Where had he gone? Those questions had hung in the air for twenty years while everyone tried to ignore them, had tried to act as if their lives were of sufficient interest to distract them...”

The time period was interesting to me. The story takes place in the 1960's, but while the rest of the country is experiencing the civil rights movement – in this small Iowa town, it feels at times if it's the 1860's. Where Glory, a 38-year old school teacher is seen as an old maid, life practically over, and where riding in a car is a major event.

Robinson's descriptions of the town and the family home are so that one can practically smell the lemon wax and sun warmed wood.

“The room was filled with those things that seemed to exist so that children can be forbidden to touch them – porcelain windmills and pagodas and china dogs...”

“She saw him put his hand on the shoulder of their mother's chair, touch the fringe on a lampshade, as if to confirm for himself that the uncanny persistence of half-forgotten objects, all in their old places, was not some trick of the mind.”

There's a sense of hopelessness in “Home”. That in a world where things are changing, sometimes faster than the world seems ready for, this town, this place, is stuck in time. The characters' lives are set, their roles in the family...their relationships with one another. No matter the fierce desire for reconciliation or recognition of past events...nothing seems to change.

“The dark little room smelled strongly of whiskey and sweat. It seemed almost domestic, and yet there was a potency of loneliness about about it like a dark spirit, a soul that had improvised this crude tabernacle to stand in the place of other shelter, flesh.”

The characters live so close to one another, but they remain so far apart that the might as well be strangers. Where in some cases home is the place where one can escape the world and be comforted and healed, this home re-opens the old wounds in ways that will never mend.

“Jack sat pondering his father, and there was something in his face more absolute than gentleness or compassion, something purged of all the words that might describe it.”

“Home” was like looking back on the past...a past that we've left behind but that these characters are trapped in. This gentle cage of home has bars that can be seen through, and sometimes reached through, but never escaped.

At least not in life they won't. ( )

Home by Marilynne Robinson is a quiet tale of Jack and Mercy Boughton who return, as adults to their childhood home in Gilead, Iowa. Each of them stuggle with internal demons, their relationship with each other, the town and their father.

Mercy is the first to return, ostensibly to care for her elderly father, Reverend Boughton, but it is quickly revealed that she had few other options after leaving a failed relationship with a married man and an uninspired career as a teacher. As he approaches the end of his life, Reverend Boughton grapples with his inability both as a father and a clergyman to help his son Jack, the glaringly apparent failure among his loving, successful and responsible children. Subsequently, Jack Boughton, an alcoholic who has struggled with his relationship with his parents and siblings since childhood, returns home heartbroken, destitute and drunk. Each character struggles to make peace with their lives their relationships with one another.

Jack's story parallels that of the biblical prodigal son, and his return home reopens old wounds, family dynamics and emotions. Robinson deftly develops all of the facets of Jack's personality into a very compelling anti-hero.

Robinson's gift to the reader in this novel is her moving examination of family life which seems common and simple on the surface, but is rife with complications, miscommunications and complex emotions. Anyone who has grown up and returns home as an adult will find that Robinson has presented this snapshot of the half-life of old familiar modes of family interaction.

This novel is the perfect and rare combination of poetry, insight, and relatability that makes a piece of literature a gift from writer to reader. ( )

Another extraordinary and beautiful book. I found it less unbearably affecting than Gilead, perhaps because death - while a presence throughout - is not so immanent as it appears in the former book and the tone feels more diffuse and less intense. To find books that deal so openly, precisely and wisely with religion, spirituality and the deepest realities of human nature is rare and wonderful.

I waited to write my review of [Home] until I had re-read parts of Marilynne's Robinson's previous novel [Gilead]. Though each book can stand separately, Home's main character, Jack Boughton, appears in Gilead as a ne'er do well who is a disappointment to his father, a minister in the Presbyterian church. (Among the main teaching of that denomination is the theory of "pre-destination", that when you are born you are already sentenced, in the eyes of God, to be among the "Saved" or cast into hell.)
"Home is where when you have to go there, they have to take you in." This quote from the poet Robert Frost is one of the underlying themes of the novel Home. But not only is Jack Boughton "taken in" by his widower father, but his younger sister Glory as well. Both have been wounded in the battle of life and both are welcomed by their father - Glory, in fact, becomes her father's caretaker.
Another theme is that of the Prodigal Son. Reverend Boughton has been waiting 20 years for his son's homecoming. Jack Boughton was known as a troublemaker to the citizens of the town and a disappointment to the members of the church's congregation. We never learn all the details of Jack's shortcomings, but Ms. Robinson gives us good details and we can fill in the rest.

The Reverend Ames, who tells the story in Gilead, does not appear often in Home. However we learn enough about his relationship to the Boughton's so that we feel Ames's disapproval of Jack. There is also an interesting interplay between the two preachers. The denomination of Reverend Ames does not believe in pre-destination. By the end of the story, the reader wonders how strongly Rev. Boughton is committed to it.

This story takes place in the 1950's when organized religion is starting to fall away as the main prop of American society. Also the importance of the family and the culture of small-town life - we, reading this in the future know what happens. In the book the characters stumble blindly toward what they hope will turn out to be a better world.

This is one of those books where you want to yell at the character "No!" "He didn't mean it that way!" "Don't do that!" The society is flawed, we know there will be a turn-over, but we grow to care for all the characters, Ms. Robinson makes them very real and what we feel is sadness as they try to live in a society that is becoming undone. ( )

Marilynne Robinson's latest novel, Home, is in part a variation on the theme of the prodigal son. However in this case, the father, Reverend Robert Boughton, does not role out the red carpet. Just as she did in her first novel, Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson evokes themes from the Bible to provide thematic foundation for her narrative. As this story proceeds we begin to get a picture of a man deeply disappointed in his son and who seemingly, in spite of some words that suggest otherwise, would have preferred that his son not return after an absence of twenty years. While his daughter Glory, who is living at home caring for him, is willing to attempt to reconnect with her brother Jack as she deals with her own personal regrets, Reverend Boughton is gradually portrayed as a vain bitter old man, shorn of the more loving aspects of the Christian belief system. Doubt and distrust of his son, not altogether unwarranted, but certainly unexpected from a man of the cloth, consume the Reverend whose blood ties with this broken son do not help him overcome his antipathy for flaws that do not seem to be beyond forgiveness. Others have shown some trust in Jack, but all seem to harbor doubts in this beautifully-written novel that shares its local and some characters with Robinson's Pulitzer Prize winning Gilead. In Gilead father and daughter remain as the rest of the family gathers to see their father through his last days, but the prodigal . . . well, read the book and find out. ( )

To experience this book fully, it is best if you've read Gilead first. It stands on its own well, but having familiarity with Gilead will add a dimension to understanding the characters, particularly Rev. Ames. I did not note as many lyrical passages in Home as I did in Gilead, but throughout the book an aching sense of love and loss resonated. I began to cry around page 225, when Jack is searching for affirmation that change is possible, even for the seemingly incorrigible. This story was sad, and gentle, and beautiful. ( )

I received this book as part of the Early Reviewers program. I am currently reading Gilead as background for this book. I hope to finish them both soon to post my review(s).

The quick summary is that this is Reverend Robert Boughton’s story from Gilead. If you’re familiar with Gilead that, while not entirely accurate, makes sense. This book perfectly parallels Gilead, her previous novel, to the point of recreating conversations word-for-word. Actually, it seems that the essence of Home must have been composed as part of the process of making Gilead. And that is commentary on how much Robinson put into Gilead– which, by the way, was published about 24 years after her previous novel.

However, it’s not Robert Boughton’s story, it only takes place in his home. This is Jacks story again – he’s the complex and guarded character who took over the later part of Gilead. Jack is the prodigal-son of sorts – the one problem child of eight Boughton children, the one closest to his father’s heart, and his father’s biggest failure. The one who comes home after a 20-year absence, just as his father seems about at the end of life.

Gilead is Rev John Ames story, and there we only understand Jack at a distance in the few things Jack will tell Ames and no one else. Here we see Jack close up, through the eyes of his younger sister, Glory. It’s Glory’s voice who colors this novel, and gives it a very different feel from Gilead. Where Ames was a carefully expressive with a deeply refined theology, Glory is bottled emotions occasionally brimming with tears, but mostly held silent – conforming to the apparent general restraint of Robinson’s 1950’s era Gilead, Iowa. She also conforms to the selfless caretaking roll of single women in 1950’s Iowa. (It’s worth noting both Ames and Glory seem strikingly naive.)

Glory is home to take care of her aging father – who is reduced to secondary character in his own book – a somewhat skewered one at that. She sees Jack and Robert and their careful interactions, and she gives us a complex character study of her family – one of outward kindness, hidden emotions and unspoken tension. Over the course of the novel, she is able to develop an intimate relationship with Jack, and it’s this, I think, that makes the novel beautiful. But, she only can see so much. When we close the book, we still don’t understand Jack. He remains a mystery internally.

Overall I enjoyed Home immensely – although I had prep myself. Like Gilead, this isn’t a book that calls to you. It’s soft and subtle, and you need to come to it in the right state of mind. But it won me over, and left me curious enough that I immediately found myself re-reading Gilead. And, honestly, I didn’t love Gilead the first time. ( )

Home is a companion novel to Gilead. It explores once again the story of Jack Boughton's return to his father's home, but this time from a different angle, which strikes closer to the heart and bone of Jack's story than did Gilead.

Gilead is a small, fictional town in Iowa. Both novels take place in what seems to be the late 1950s (the precise date is never specified). Gilead explores the uncomfortable relationship between John Ames, the town's aging Congregationalist minister, and Jack, the troubled son of Ames's best friend and contemporary, Robert Boughton, the town's Presbyterian minister. Gilead takes the form of a ever-lengthening missive from Ames to his son, the very young child of a May-December marriage, which Ames hopes will help guide the boy through his adolescence when Ames will no longer be alive to guide him personally. In particular, Ames hopes to prevent him from making a mistake of the sort for which neither he nor Reverend Boughton can (despite their best intentions) truly forgive Boughton's adult son Jack: as a teenager, Jack impregnated a girl from an uneducated, poor household, and then failed to take responsibility for the baby, who died.

Gilead is a brilliant study of a man whose deepest wish is to be a good minister and a good man. Ames's missive to his son morphs into a rambling (yet precise) exploration of his own soul that ultimately exposes his worst blind spot, opening his eyes to his own failings and to the essential goodness in Jack. Home tackles a deeper, more difficult problem, unraveling the story of Jack himself.

Using a conventional past-tense, third-person, chronological narrative, Home brings readers inside the perspective of Jack's youngest sibling, Glory, herself returned to Gilead at age thirty-eight after a humiliating romantic failure. To Glory, Jack was the older brother whose flaws seemed only to magnify and concentrate their father's love for him. Though she yearns for Jack's affection as intensely as her father does, she lacks both her father's sense of entitlement and, being younger and less personally wounded by Jack's misdeeds, the inclination to hold him accountable. Readers familiar with Gilead know things about Jack that Glory does not, a subtext that enriches the story, adding both poignance and suspense. Slowly, tentatively, the two adult children form an alliance constructed in the narrow breathing spaces they snatch amid the pervasive presence of their dying, magnificently but covertly domineering father. Robinson is a wonderfully adept and subtle writer who leaves it to the reader to discover, through the fabric of the story, how and why Jack has been made a scapegoat for the guilt his father cannot bear to acknowledge in himself.

I recommend reading Gilead first, and then Home - and I do recommend both for readers who enjoy subtle, psychologically complex literary novels.

Glory Boughton has come home to Gilead to care for her dying father, the Reverend Robert Boughton. As Glory strives to fulfill her father's exacting demands, she laments the loss of her fiancé and former life, all the while regretting her move back to her stagnant hometown. One morning, the Reverend receives a letter from his wayward son Jack, telling his father that he will soon be returning home. The letter comes very much as a surprise and blessing for the Reverend, as Jack has been absent for 20 years and has had no communication with the family. Jack's history of rebelliousness is long and fraught with shame and pain among the family, and as Jack moves ever homeward, those he left behind struggle with the hope of reunion. As Glory and her father prepare for Jack's arrival, they both find themselves thinking of past hurts and are ever hopeful that Jack's homecoming will be a much needed balm to his father's suffering spirit. But Jack's homecoming is not easy, and it soon becomes apparent that although his father wishes for nothing more than to forgive his son, he cannot. Jack, a quiet and emotionally wounded man, brings with him secrets of his own, and as Glory begins to forge a tentative relationship with him, they both come to find that the peace and contentment they so long for in their family will come at a very dear price. In this poignant tale of the prodigal son, Robinson takes us into the hearts and minds of a family that is at fierce work to be whole, to a place where redemption and reparation are so desperately desired, but unable to come to fruition.

This was an absolutely beautiful book. There were several sections where I found myself so moved by the drama unfolding on the pages that I couldn't help but cry. Robinson writes with such grace and tact that it is impossible not to be moved by her characters' quiet proclamations and heartfelt utterances. Whether it is the sorrow of a life that has been forsaken or the terrible humbleness of Jack's return, the writing is replete with wellsprings of sentiment and passion. The words are quiet and serene, but just underneath the surface I was witnessing torrents of ragged emotion and years of suppressed pain.

The Reverend, ever hopeful and gentle with his children, cannot seem to ever be able to wrap his mind around what it is that his son needs. Although he longs to give his son the forgiveness that he has come home for, he is unable to let the transgressions of the past be unburdened from his heart and give his son peace. It is such a juxtaposition, to see the tenderness that he expresses toward Jack, all the while withholding the one thing that his son most desperately needs, the thing that is so hard for him to ask for. He is constantly at odds with himself, his heart longing to grant pardon and his head ever refusing. It broke my heart to watch these two men fumble so blindly with their intentions, to see them both in so much pain but be unable to express it or relieve it.

Jack, despite being the miscreant in this tale, was the one character whom I felt the most for. He was so spiritually depleted and it seemed as if all of his hope had been abandoned. He was quiet and gentle, yes, but also pitifully humbled and sorrowfully contrite. He seemed to worry himself to distraction, mostly about what others thought of him or what they would think. There was a quiet struggle taking place within: his need for acceptance and forgiveness pitted against his need for self-preservation and secrecy. He had a wry and very self-deprecating attitude in his interactions with Glory, a way of making both more and less of the situations that he found himself in. In his desire for his father's blessing he seemed to expect the wounds he would incur, believing in some way that he deserved them.

I also really liked how the view of Jack from Glory's eyes gave his character more depth. The relationship between the two was fraught with tension, but it was there that Jack seemed to open up. Though he would never really reveal all of his secrets, his attempts to reach out to Glory brought the gentleness and meekness of his character into full relief.

Though I found the last section of the book to be the most emotional section, there were several instances when an ordinary situation would provoke a response from one of the characters that was deeply affecting. Reading this book was much like walking in a minefield; I never knew when something was going to come out and grab me and shake me to the core. During one of the more touching arguments between father and son, the Reverend, full of sorrow, exclaims to his son, "If I'd had to die without seeing your face again, I'd have doubted the goodness of the Lord." The fact that this statement comes from a man of the cloth makes it all the more powerful and affecting. What the book really boils down to is the conundrum of a man of God refusing his most beloved child release, the child in turn unable to finally give his father the peace he so obviously needs. But it is within the framework of this story that Robinson drives her characters to strive and twist in their yearnings to exist as a family complete, a situation that sadly never comes to pass.

I really felt strongly for this book, and I think that anyone who enjoys literature steeped with emotion would enjoy it too. Robinson touches profoundly on the themes of forgiveness, absolution and regret with beautiful accuracy, making this a very quiet but stunning read. This book is a companion to Robinson's 2004 novel Gilead. Both books take place at the same time, so it's not necessary to read them in any particular order. Highly recommended. ( )

A delicate and sensitive exploration of family, home, and death. ( )

Give me just the basic outline of this novel and I wouldn't even pick it up: a middle-aged brother and sister, disappointed and failed in life, return to the family home, now inhabited solely by their dying clergyman father. They talk a bit, they argue a bit, and at the end something approaching plot happens.

But wow! What an awesome novel. Robinson has the verbal precision of Philip Roth at his best, only the world about which she writes is muted, soft, understated, where Roth's is bold and confrontational. I think that is where the power in the novel lies. The reader is never made privy to the inner hurt that the brother and sister are feeling. We can only wonder at the torments they are going through as they tentatively negotiate a way round their disappointments. All this in a very unusual third person style, in which the sister, Glory, is ever-present, but somehow secondary in much of what is said to her brother and father. But that, I guess, is the point: this woman who was never able to take control of her life. Ah, Glory! ( )

Compelling and claustophobic. I can still feel the intense emotion and atmosphere that this book evokes.

I do have an appreciation for the impact of place, time and conflict on these characters. I felt the tension between the father, Rev. Boughton, Glory and Jack and their inevitablity to injure and judge one another. The conflict of the younger sister, Glory, helping Jack resist his self-sabatoaging ways while they both hope to care for the ailing and elderly father created a dance of sorts, enough to keep you reading and pulling for one or them all. Robinson has a fine artist ability to set the tone within the home, to depict the nature of family members, who were at once at odds with and gracious to each other. Her language suggested a low-light shining, in which only certain aspects of character could be seen in particular settings. A family gathered around a meal, by Robinson, magnified each diner's taste, hesitancies, and insecurites. Like Rembrandt, she continues the process of defining the character's feelings, beliefs, and dependencies; one scene juxtaposed against the darkness and problems of the next. It is Robinson's understated and rythmic use of language and subelty that creates the unifying effect of the Home. But it was also her language, creating the intensity of the characters and their interactions with one another, in a type of monotonal marching cadence, that frustrated me. It seemed as though, the author wants me to feel the nature of their confining relationships and that is why her language stays the same throughout the entire novel. A study in contrasts, personalities that strain for their being, and hope, upon hope, all three wanting to please. The period of the Home seemed to be set in the 30's for me. I was actually surprised by the introduction of the television, it made the simplicity of their lives that much more curious. I am glad to have read it. I had to make myself stay at it through some sections. I was in awe of Robinson's ability to examine the tensions caused by differing religious beliefs and the roles that are played out within a family. I recommend it to those with patience, an ability to read for the whole piece and not little shots of excitement. Because the whole picture so accurately painted here is worth the trial of patient reading. ( )

I finished the book yesterday and I'm still not sure how I feel about it. Robinson's writing is exquisite. There are sentences that make you stop and gasp for the beauty of it. Her characterizations are masterful.

All in all, it is a beautiful book. The angst of the father in dealing with the prodigal son. The sister, Glory, dealing with her own disappoinments and the joy she felt in having her brother home. Even Jacks own feelings of trying to please his father. My disappoinment came in never truly understanding why Jack felt the way he did. Did I miss something?

Full disclosure: Marilynne Robinson's Gilead is one of my favorite novels of all time, so I'm hardly coming to its companion, Home, with fresh eyes. I was nervous about starting Home, as a matter of fact: nervous it wouldn't live up to Gilead's precedent, and that I would inevitably be disappointed, even with a very good book. In fact, that wasn't what happened at all. For one thing, despite its relative lack of action, I absolutely could not put down Home and read it in just a few days. For another, I found that the two novels speak to each other in unique and thought-provoking ways. They are very different, and much of what I found magical about Gilead is absent from Home. Yet Home gave me a new perspective on the story I first heard in Gilead; and on finishing it, I'm almost convinced to privilege the second telling despite being seduced by the style of its brother. The first book, interestingly, is a closing, a coming-to-terms with a full life about to end, in which old demons are acknowledged and absorbed in the overflowing of new love. The second is a continuous and desperate struggle, very much engaged, still, in the business of living in the flawed and often cruel world.

Both novels are set in the same place, over the same stretch of time. In a small Iowa town in the mid-1950's, two minister friends are growing old: John Ames, the Congregationalist minister, and Robert Boughton, the former leader of the Presbyterian flock.

"There were so many jokes between them. Once when they were boys in seminary they were walking across a bridge, arguing about some point of doctrine. A wind had blown her father's hat into the water, and he had rolled up his pant legs and walked in the river after it, not gaining on it at all, still disputing, as it sailed along in the current. "I was winning that argument!" her father said.

""Well, I was laughing too hard to keep up my side of it." The hat finally caught on a snag, and that was the whole story, but it always made them laugh. The joke seemed to be that once they were very young and now they were very old, and that they had been the same day after day and were somehow at the end of it all so utterly changed."

Ames is the narrator of Gilead, and one of the most stunning things about that book is his wise, lyrical narrative voice. He's wrapping up loose ends the best he can, and preparing for death: he finds himself, at the end of his life, unexpectedly married, with a young son, and the purpose of his narrative is to relay the story of the Ames family to his child, so young Robby will know his roots. It's an extremely intimate narration, infused with love and quietness. Even as it tells of the past theological struggles in the Ames family, between John's father and grandfather during the time of the Civil War, the current John Ames speaks out of calm, in the last stages of making peace with his life.

Home, on the other hand, while also quiet by most standards, is told in a third-person narration that centers on a trio, not a single person. Just down the street from Ames and his young wife and son, his old friend Reverend Boughton welcomes his middle-aged daughter Glory, who is leaving her own disappointed hopes in order to care for her father in his old age. Shortly thereafter, the Reverend's best-loved and prodigal son Jack also returns, "to stay awhile." Both brother and sister have secrets, wounds from their former lives which they hold close to themselves and only gradually reveal to one another. And even though the Reverend is nearing the end of his life, just like his old friend, he doesn't seem to have Ames' peace. He is tortured with guilt and worry over the unresolved grief in his life, and his inability to come to terms with Jack's mistakes - either to forgive his son, or to stop loving him. Neither is he able to engage with the struggles in Jack's own life that are tormenting him, and thereby achieve the connection with his son that he so craves. For those who come to Home from Gilead, and therefore know what Jack is keeping from his family, there are many heartbreaking moments between father and son, in which the reader knows that the stakes are much higher - or, at least different, more complicated - than Reverend Boughton realizes:

     "Jack watched him for a moment. Then he said, "I heard you all laughing about that magazine. It's pretty foolish, all in all. Could I see it for a second? Thanks. I thought he made one interesting point in here somewhere, though. He said the seriousness of American Christianity was called into question by our treatment of the Negro. It seems to me that there is something to be said for that idea."

     Boughton said, "Jack's been looking at television."

     "Yes, I have. And I have lived in places where there are Negro people. They are very fine Christians, many of them."

     Boughton said, "Then we can't have done so badly by them, can we? That is the essential thing."

     Jack looked at him, then he laughed. "I'd say we've done pretty badly. Especially by Christian standards. As I understand them." Jack sank back into his chair as if he were the most casual man on earth and said, "What do you think, Reverend Ames."

     Ames looked at him. "I have to agree with you. I'm not really familiar with the issue. I haven't been following the news as closely as I once did. But I agree."

     "It isn't exactly news--" Jack smiled and shook his head. "Sorry, Reverend," he said. Robby brought the tractor to show him, let him work the steering wheel, ran the tractor along the arm and over the back of the chair.

     Boughton said, "I don't believe in calling anyone's religion into question because he has certain failings. A blind spot or two. There are better ways to talk about these things.""

One of the things I love about both versions of the Gilead/Home story is the complex way it's engaged with issues of race: even in this rural, middle-American town (so homogeneous that Glory says "There aren't any colored people in Gilead"), the scars of American racial cruelty reach deep into both the Ames and Boughton stories, estranging fathers and sons throughout the generations. This seems to me a profound truth about oppression: Martin Luther King said, famously, that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, and Robinson makes the point that injustice anywhere is also a threat to human connection, to communion among family members, even those living sheltered lives hundreds of miles away from the apparent sites of conflict.

But she also portrays how complicated it is even to address, let alone resolve, these issues, because they involve different versions of "right" colliding. Reverend Boughton, Jack and Glory are all sympathetic characters who love each other - and that can only get them so far. Not to go on a name-dropping extravaganza, but I think it was Hegel who pointed out that tragic conflict is often not the collision of Right and Wrong, but of Right and Right: two different sets of priorities and principles, two parties acting according to their consciences, are unable to budge from the collision course they've set. By these standards Home isn't an unmitigated tragedy: the characters, through their quiet struggles, are able to approach one another more closely and come to some degree of peace before the story ends. But there is a tragic underpinning, a gulf between these people that cannot be wholly traversed. Throughout it all, though, Robinson is so perceptive and subtle in her depictions, and so lyrical in her prose, that the elements of tragedy and quiet triumph come together in a work of great beauty.

The Boughton family plays a supporting role in “Gilead,” Robinson's beautiful, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about John Ames, an aging Congregational minister reflecting on his life in a small mid-Western town. “Home” parallels the earlier book with the Boughtons at center stage in the mid-1950's. Thirty-eight-year-old Glory has returned to Gilead to care for her frail, failing father, the Reverend Robert Boughton. The old man, who has raised a houseful of kids, most of whom have presumably happy families and productive lives elsewhere, has never gotten over the pain and guilt of his inability to reach his troubled son, Jack. Jack was a loner as a child, a petty thief as a teen-ager and left town twenty years ago after bringing shame on the family by fathering a child with a young girl.

Now Jack has returned home, to stay “awhile.” Over the course of his stay, we get bits and pieces of information about Glory’s broken engagement and Jack’s alcoholism, time in prison, and the woman and child he left in St. Louis. But this isn’t a book in which very much happens. It’s a book about forgiveness, understanding, redemption and, mostly, home. It’s quiet, thoughtful and slow-paced. That said, I lost patience in the middle with the pacing and the characters’ awkwardness. Glory cries easily but always quietly; Jack apologizes often and laughs, not joyously but ironically; the Reverend frowns on the use of the piano for anything but hymns and couldn’t possibly be called “Dad.” These people are so worried about intruding on each others’ privacy that they barely manage to communicate at all. Yes, I know this was before the let-it-all-hang-out era but did people really live like this, even a minister’s family in small-town Iowa in the ‘50s?

But after plodding through the middle hundred pages or so, I was unexpectedly moved at the end of the book by one character who has never felt himself at home anywhere and another who finally realizes what home means to her and how it will determine the rest of her life. ( )

The best novel I have read in a long time. It’s quiet and somber, reflective and perceptive, moving and thought-provoking. It’s a retelling of the parable of the Prodigal Son, with more depth and complexity than the original.

The novel deals with issues of morality and religion with sensitivity and understanding. This is a novel for thinking adults, for those with faith and without, for the hopeful and the hopeless. ( )

Home, the 2009 Orange Prize Winner by Marilynne Robinson, was an alternate story to Gilead. While Gilead was a love letter from Reverend John Ames to his son, Robby, Home was the story about Ames’ best friend, Robert Boughton, and his family. It was a clever look at both families, and the peak at small-town life reminded me a bit of Winesburg, Ohio. While I thought Gilead was an okay read, I enjoyed Home much more.

Told from the perspective of Glory Boughton, this book explored the sometimes-complicated relationships between fathers and sons. Reverend Robert Boughton was aging, taken care of by his daughter, Glory, and was getting the surprise of his lifetime – the return of his long-lost son, Jack. Jack was always the wayward son – a thief, drunkard and reckless man. Despite Jack’s flaws, his father always considered him his favorite. Jack had not seen his father in 20 years, and his return home overjoyed his ailing father.

But soon enough, and despite Jack’s best efforts, his return conjured up too many bad memories, and the missteps from Jack’s past continued to haunt him at home. His relationship with his father never took off, and his efforts to make Reverend Ames proud of him fell short.

The theme of returning home was prevalent throughout this story. Jack and Glory had returned home, and “home” brought different emotions for both siblings. For Jack, it was a reminder of his mistakes in a town that always cast suspicion on him. For Glory, it was a reminder of her failure to marry and have children, and reaffirmed her responsibility to keep up the Boughton home for her siblings once their father died – so they too could have a sense of home whenever they wanted.

Home was an intensely emotional book – often complicated to read because of the theological conversations – but one I wish I could have read in college, with the benefit of a professor to guide me through. Home may be where the heart is, but for many, it’s just a memory that’s best left in the past. Read Home is you want to take a painful journey of returning home and reconnecting with family – for better or worst. ( )

A few years ago I devoured Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead in 2 days. I did the same with Home, but didn't have such a satisfying feeling at the end. The novel centers around another elderly Reverend in Gilead Iowa and two of his seven children who are caring for him. Jack and Glory are the 2 kids who didn't end up in a favorable situation, i.e. family, good jobs. Jack was always the bad kid who was silent and didn't fit in with the rest of the family. The whole novel focuses on forgiveness. There is an excellent section where Glory says her father always taught forgiveness must come before trying to understand yet the Reverend is so tied up in his daily forgiving of his children, especially Jack and his faults, he never tries to understand his children, much less accept them.
I also had some issues with the writing. If I counted all the "He laughed." "She laughed." sentences between Glory and Jack it would be over 100 I'm sure. All the characters were dealing with awkward silences and not communicating well with each other. In order to get this across Robinson would finish a sarcastic, ironic, awkward remark with "he laughed." There seemed to be a lot of laughter from characters who were silent loners and were too classy to grin. Also, the race disccusions between Jack and the reverend seemed so contrived and forced. Yes, I know it was the 1950's, but it seemed really out of character and just plopped into various scenes to create tension as the reader figures out that Jack has been spending the last 10 years with an African-American woman.
Also, I felt I was kept an arm's length from the characters. They were very private with each other, but it was annoying to me as the reader that I didn't get to learn more about Glory's relationship with her ex-fiance or know why Jack went to prison.
Unlike others, I liked Gilead better than Home. ( )

Just a gorgeous book. So delicately written and yet so profound. I ached for the character of Glory, one of the overlooked girls in the extensive Boughton family and thought the prodigal brother Jack was a great character. Some of the theological conversations got a little stodgy but I was totally hooked on the slow pace of life, highlighted by meals and the ailing father's naps. Never liked a major prize-winner this much. Will definitely be reading Gilead and Housekeeping now. ( )

I feel I'm missing something here - so many people have got so much out of this book but I don't see it. I liked Gilead a lot and this is an interesting companion with excellent characterisation but nothing happens. Plot isn't usually the thing I put most emphasis on but this moves so slowly it feels like wading through syrup.

Perhaps this book means more to people who understand more about theology than I do. I appreciate that some of the religious themes and discussions passed right over my head. Still, this wasn't a problem when I read Gilead, and Home is really more about family and relationships.

By the end I felt so frustrated by the lack of events that I even became frustrated by the characters I liked and was hurrying to the end. Then I was further frustrated by the questions that went unanswered. I'm puzzled because usually I like books that focus on characterisation and that have unresolved endings, but in this case I'm just left irritated. ( )