Home by Marilynne Robinson ** Discussion Questions Available! **

Release date: 2008 / 325 pages

Synopsis (from back 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 trouble and pain. Home is a moving and healing book about families, family secrets, and the passing of generations, about love and death and faith.

First line: “‘Home to stay, Glory! Yes!’ Her father said, and her heart sank.”

Review: Oh, how I loved this novel! A client requested a custom kit and I was so happy that I would actually get paid to read Robinson’s latest. I read her Pulitzer prize winning Gilead about two years ago and still consider it one of my favorite novels, ever.

However, Home is quite different from Gilead. While Gilead was quite philosophical and gentle, Home is faster-paced and focuses more on external action. It takes place at the same time as Gilead, so the narrative action is the same as Gilead, but very, very different in feel and tone. In many ways, this novel is the perfect combination of Housekeeping‘s characterization and Gilead’s philosophy.  By the way, if you haven’t yet read Gilead, this will not affect your understanding of Home at all. (But do read Gilead eventually!).

What I loved about this novel is the complexity of the characterization. We really get to know each of the three main characters intimately, and grow to love each. Jack returns, after twenty years, and tries to answer the following question: “Say you do something terrible.  And it’s done.  And you can’t change it.  Then how do you live the rest of your life?  What do you say about it?” 

Since all of us have committed some act we would gladly change, this question resonates throughout the novel and within the reader’s heart.  The beauty of this novel resides in the characters learning to act through compassion, attempting to discard the corrosive habit of assuming the worst of Jack, and reinventing their relationships after twenty years of silence.

Beyond the characterization, Robinson’s gentle wisdom shines throughout the novel:

Experience had taught them that truth had sharp edges and hard corners, and could be seriously at odds with kindness.  They had learned that excessive devotion to even the highest things seemed and probably was santimonious… They recognized grace in the readiness of the darkest sinner to take a little joke, a few self-effacing words, as an apology (17).

As a matter of courtesy they treated one another’s deceptions like truth which was a different thing from deceiving or being deceived.  In fact, it was a a great part of the fabric of mutual understanding that made their family close. (232)

I am at a loss to do this novel justice, so I hope you will simply accept that I recommend it — deeply.  And, if your book club decides to tackle it and would be interested in a little help, consider my kit or discussion questions.  (I have both for Gilead and Housekeeping, too).  And if you do decide to read it, be sure to come back and report!

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