Home

From the book cover

Glory Boughton, age thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother Jack - the prodigal son of the family, gone twenty years - comes home, too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with difficulty and pain. A troubled 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 Robert Boughton's most beloved child. Brilliant, lovable, and wayward, Jack forges an intense bond with Glory and engages painfully and profoundly with John Ames, his godfather and namesake.

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Marilynne Robinson won the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction and a Pulitzer Prize for Home.

I don't get it. The first 200 pages are dull and boring. There are no chapters so it's a bitch for those of us who commute or simply have busy lives that don't allow us to sit down and read an entire 325-page novel in one go. Yeah, it does have some page breaks, but that's not the same as chapters. Until reading this novel, I never realized how important chapters are to the reading experience.

The main themes in this novel are redemption, grace and destiny. Jack and Glory's father, Reverend Boughton, is dying but can not do so in peace because he is worried about Jack's soul. Due to the main conflict, Robinson explores a lot of theological ideals as the Boughtons try to come to some sort of acceptance that will allow the Reverend Boughton to die in peace. Set in the 1950s, around the time of the Montgomery riots, racial injustice is subtly intertwined in the dialogue and plot.

Home is a companion to Robinson's second novel, Gilead.  Apparently Home and Gilead are set at the same time and tell the same stories from different perspectives. I'm putting Gilead on my reading list to see if it changes my impression of Home.

Recommendation? If you like dull and boring, give Home a shot!

2.5/5