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Review
Her fiction attends with rapt attention to the "dear ordinary" breathing fresh air into the long-standing debates of American Protestantism (Kasia Boddy, DAILY TELEGRAPH )
'A quietly moving novel of faith and forgiveness. (Amber Pearson, DAILY MAIL )
'So finely wrought as to make the work of her more productive contemporaries seem tawdry by comparison . . . The cadences of her prose have a resonant authority more like that of a great music rather than language. The effect is utterly haunting. The bad news is that is makes all other writing seem jejune for ages afterwards (Jane Shilling, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )
This is certainly a novel about faith and love. However, it is also a meditation on doubt and fear . . . There is both a subtlety and a simplicity about her most powerful themes. She asserts the elusiveness of perfection, the foolishness of sever self-ju (HERALD )
'A quietly moving novel of faith and forgiveness. (Amber Pearson, DAILY MAIL )
'So finely wrought as to make the work of her more productive contemporaries seem tawdry by comparison . . . The cadences of her prose have a resonant authority more like that of a great music rather than language. The effect is utterly haunting. The bad news is that is makes all other writing seem jejune for ages afterwards (Jane Shilling, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )
This is certainly a novel about faith and love. However, it is also a meditation on doubt and fear . . . There is both a subtlety and a simplicity about her most powerful themes. She asserts the elusiveness of perfection, the foolishness of sever self-ju (HERALD )
Review
'One of the saddest books I have ever loved'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Expecting a fast paced yarn or novel heavy on plot will disappoint readers, but if you allow yourself to let the stillness of the prose take you into the stifling world of the ailing rector's house and be part of each character's search for their own sense of 'home', you'll be rewarded. Home in the sense of the physical, the spiritual, the historical and family is all gently
considered. Whilst this exploration is thought provoking it's final inconclusiveness is the saddest conclusion of all possible endings and something that lasts a long time after the book is read. I loved it.
considered. Whilst this exploration is thought provoking it's final inconclusiveness is the saddest conclusion of all possible endings and something that lasts a long time after the book is read. I loved it.
89 of 96 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
'Home to stay, Glory! Yes!' her father said, and her heart sank. He attempted a twinkle of joy at this thought, but his eyes were damp with commiseration. 'To stay for a while this time!' he amended, and took her bag from her, first shifting his cane to his weaker hand.'
Marilynne Robinson's Home opens with retired minister Robert Broughton's youngest daughter reluctantly returning to her father's house, her childhood home - essentially to nurse him as he dies. She is one of eight children, the only one free to take care of him. She has brought her own secrets back to her house - her life has not followed the conventions of 1950s small town America. Her brother Jack, the 'ne'er do well' of the family, the son most beloved of the father, writes to say that he will be coming home after twenty years.
The prodigal returns with a hangover but seeks to make amends for the disgrace he brought to the family as a youngster. We gradually learn of his wrongdoings as a boy and snippets of his life since. Though he is not religious he turns to John Ames, also a minister and Robert Broughton's life long friend - and for whom Jack was named - for a blessing and redemption. Jack's life is clearly still complicated - there is a woman he writes to but something has gone wrong. As readers we understand, perhaps, more about his relationship with Della and the secret involved there than his family living in the same house are able to pick up.
Everything slows down in the middle of the novel as Jack looks for work, fixes the De Soto in the garage, works in the garden and avoids booze. Glory and Jack start to grow close though their shared work about the house and garden, through small kindnesses to each other and in sharing the care of their father. In a family where words and letters and books have always been important they do not talk much; communication is indirect and politeness and well-meaning gets in the way. Jack and Glory do tell each other more than either can tell their father.
The novel is strong on time and place. Jack has been living in St Louis and sympathises with the 'coloured' and in 1957 what appears to be the incipient civil rights movement. Gilead is small town America where Jack's disgrace was visited on the whole family. There is genteel poverty and there is the sense of life revolving around the church and home. As Robert Broughton comes to the end of his life it is Jack's immortal soul he is concerned for.
Though very different in style Home reminded me of Anne Enright's The Gathering where two siblings of a large family have a special bond, where the sister longs for her 'damaged' brother to come right, where there is the sadness of unrealised potential.
This novel stands alone but is a companion piece to Gilead, which was written from the point of view of letters from elderly John Ames to his six year old son, and covers much of the same period of time. We see now how John Ames and his namesake have misunderstood each other. I think the third person narrative style in Home works well. Though also a novel about fathers and sons Glory provides another point of view, another player in the family dynamics. Robert Broughton longs to forgive his son but can't quite manage to do it. Glory forgives him quickly and manages to wish more for him than she expects for herself.
I loved Housekeeping, was not fully enamoured of Gilead when it came out but will return to it after reading Home, which I thought was beautifully written and realised, though very very sad.
Marilynne Robinson's Home opens with retired minister Robert Broughton's youngest daughter reluctantly returning to her father's house, her childhood home - essentially to nurse him as he dies. She is one of eight children, the only one free to take care of him. She has brought her own secrets back to her house - her life has not followed the conventions of 1950s small town America. Her brother Jack, the 'ne'er do well' of the family, the son most beloved of the father, writes to say that he will be coming home after twenty years.
The prodigal returns with a hangover but seeks to make amends for the disgrace he brought to the family as a youngster. We gradually learn of his wrongdoings as a boy and snippets of his life since. Though he is not religious he turns to John Ames, also a minister and Robert Broughton's life long friend - and for whom Jack was named - for a blessing and redemption. Jack's life is clearly still complicated - there is a woman he writes to but something has gone wrong. As readers we understand, perhaps, more about his relationship with Della and the secret involved there than his family living in the same house are able to pick up.
Everything slows down in the middle of the novel as Jack looks for work, fixes the De Soto in the garage, works in the garden and avoids booze. Glory and Jack start to grow close though their shared work about the house and garden, through small kindnesses to each other and in sharing the care of their father. In a family where words and letters and books have always been important they do not talk much; communication is indirect and politeness and well-meaning gets in the way. Jack and Glory do tell each other more than either can tell their father.
The novel is strong on time and place. Jack has been living in St Louis and sympathises with the 'coloured' and in 1957 what appears to be the incipient civil rights movement. Gilead is small town America where Jack's disgrace was visited on the whole family. There is genteel poverty and there is the sense of life revolving around the church and home. As Robert Broughton comes to the end of his life it is Jack's immortal soul he is concerned for.
Though very different in style Home reminded me of Anne Enright's The Gathering where two siblings of a large family have a special bond, where the sister longs for her 'damaged' brother to come right, where there is the sadness of unrealised potential.
This novel stands alone but is a companion piece to Gilead, which was written from the point of view of letters from elderly John Ames to his six year old son, and covers much of the same period of time. We see now how John Ames and his namesake have misunderstood each other. I think the third person narrative style in Home works well. Though also a novel about fathers and sons Glory provides another point of view, another player in the family dynamics. Robert Broughton longs to forgive his son but can't quite manage to do it. Glory forgives him quickly and manages to wish more for him than she expects for herself.
I loved Housekeeping, was not fully enamoured of Gilead when it came out but will return to it after reading Home, which I thought was beautifully written and realised, though very very sad.
47 of 53 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I mistakenly thought Marilynne Robinson's Home was a sequel to Gilead (2004). It's not. It's contemporaneous -- the same story from a different perspective, though knowledge of the earlier Pulitzer-winning novel is assumed. One almost wonders whether Home started life as a notebook for Gilead. Ever wondered what supporting characters in novels do when they're not on the page? No? Well now you can find out anyway. It's probably a good idea to leave all your expectations at the door with Home, as its markedly different to Robinson's previous novels.
Where Housekeeping (1980) and Gilead were masterful fictionalized memoirs that dove deep into their narrator's personal and family history, Home is a reasonably straightforward, third-person, temporally-continuous narrative. Jack Boughton arrives home after twenty years to live in the desolate house of his ailing minister father, Robert, and his heartbroken spinster sister, Glory.
Though the narration looks-in on the thoughts of Glory (now all but a servant to her father), Glory is primarily a spectator to the comings and goings of Jack, who is the central driving force in the plot. In his childhood, he fathered a child and ran away. He returns from his time in the wilderness disgraced, determined to win the support of his father and the Rev'd John Ames (his namesake and the narrator of Gilead), hoping against hope to build a settled life for himself in this isolated Iowa town, dreaming that his wife will return to him from St Louis.
It sounds like the setup for a great novel. And it is. But that novel is Gilead. Home, though still good, pales in comparison. Housekeeping and Gilead are wonderful for their subjectiveness: their whimsical, unreliable narration, full of little reminisces, stories from long ago and (in Ames's case) offhand insights regarding theology. But Home is practically a study of boredom -- it's three miserable, ordinary people, living in an empty house. It's Big Brother 1956.
The book's strength is, unsurprisingly, Robinson's sensational descriptive prose. Though I was left nonplussed by Home, I still say without hesitation that Robinson is one of the best stylists of English I've ever come across, and the magician that wowed the world with Housekeeping is still in evidence here. Robinson can still write a stunning sentence, but this whole is less than the sum of its parts.
Where Housekeeping (1980) and Gilead were masterful fictionalized memoirs that dove deep into their narrator's personal and family history, Home is a reasonably straightforward, third-person, temporally-continuous narrative. Jack Boughton arrives home after twenty years to live in the desolate house of his ailing minister father, Robert, and his heartbroken spinster sister, Glory.
Though the narration looks-in on the thoughts of Glory (now all but a servant to her father), Glory is primarily a spectator to the comings and goings of Jack, who is the central driving force in the plot. In his childhood, he fathered a child and ran away. He returns from his time in the wilderness disgraced, determined to win the support of his father and the Rev'd John Ames (his namesake and the narrator of Gilead), hoping against hope to build a settled life for himself in this isolated Iowa town, dreaming that his wife will return to him from St Louis.
It sounds like the setup for a great novel. And it is. But that novel is Gilead. Home, though still good, pales in comparison. Housekeeping and Gilead are wonderful for their subjectiveness: their whimsical, unreliable narration, full of little reminisces, stories from long ago and (in Ames's case) offhand insights regarding theology. But Home is practically a study of boredom -- it's three miserable, ordinary people, living in an empty house. It's Big Brother 1956.
The book's strength is, unsurprisingly, Robinson's sensational descriptive prose. Though I was left nonplussed by Home, I still say without hesitation that Robinson is one of the best stylists of English I've ever come across, and the magician that wowed the world with Housekeeping is still in evidence here. Robinson can still write a stunning sentence, but this whole is less than the sum of its parts.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Simply sad
Marilynne Robinson's "Home" is hard to describe, but I'd say that it is more about emotional impact on the reader than enjoyment of story. Read more
Published 29 days ago by Blue in Washington
Subtle, complex
How do you forgive someone who is broken but not exactly repentant? How can the broken forgive those who brought them up in such rigid religious ways that much can never be spoken... Read more
Published 6 months ago by sparkle1
no place like home
this book was recommended to me to read, and it isn't until afterwards as you reflect on it that you grow to like the story and the way it's told. Read more
Published 7 months ago by eh
Just didn't get it
I'm afraid I'm another of those who found this dull and intolerably slow.
The characters are unconvincing, unsympathetic and irritating. Read more
The characters are unconvincing, unsympathetic and irritating. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Annette Pacey
The Prodigal Son
When I added this title to My Wishlist although I had heard of this contemporary American novelist I had not read any of her novels. Read more
Published 9 months ago by LindyLouMac
Tedious Drivel
Life is too short to waste time on this tedious book. It deserves no stars.
My Book Group chose this novel and so I felt obliged to persist with it. Read more
My Book Group chose this novel and so I felt obliged to persist with it. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Minnie
The prodigal who didn't quite make it home
Rembrandt's Parable of the Prodigal Son has the returnee resting his young, shaved head on his father's chest while the father's great rich cloak covers him -- an anguished baby,... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Glenn Myers
Dreadfully depressing
I had quite enjoyed Gilead, and looked forward to reading this 'companion' book, hoping that there might be some redemption and happiness for the characters on the other side of... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Bibliophan
Vale of Tears leavened by moments of redemption - the Long Littleness...
One professional reviewer described this book as `one of the saddest books I have ever loved' And the surprising conflation of that statement is very apt. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Lady Fancifull
Not quite there
Jack Broughton, prodigal son, has returned to the town of Gilead, to attempt to make peace with his father and sister Glory. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Catherine Murphy
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