Aug 15

Aug 15 Home (Gilead, #2)

Author: Marilynne Robinson
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

Home parallels the story told in Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead. It is a moving and healing book about families, family secrets, and the passing of the generations, about love and death and faith.

Hundreds of thousands were enthralled by the luminous voice of John Ames in Gilead Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel. Home is an entirely independent, deeply affecting novel that takes place concurrently in the same locale, this time in the household of Reverend Robert Boughton, Ames’s closest friend.

Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack — the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years — comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain.

Jack is one of the great characters in recent literature. A bad 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 Boughton’s most beloved child. Brilliant, lovable, and wayward, Jack forges an intense bond with Glory and engages painfully with Ames, his godfather and namesake.

Home is a moving and healing book about families, family secrets, and the passing of the generations, about love and death and faith. It is Robinson’s greatest work, an unforgettable embodiment of the deepest and most universal emotions.

TL;DR Review

Home is a beautiful, unique sequel to Gilead, and I really enjoyed it.

For you if: You read Gilead, and/or you’re interested in historical fiction with a plot centered on religion.

Full Review

“She thought, If I or my father or any Boughton has ever stirred the Lord's compassion, then Jack will be all right. Because perdition for him would be perdition for every one of us.”

I picked this book (and Gilead last month) up now because I’m making my way through the #ReadingWomen challenge, but the timing couldn’t be more perfect — I’m now only one book away from being ready to read the penultimate fourth book in the Gilead “series,” Jack, which comes out next month.

Each Gilead novel takes place in exactly the same timeframe, but each from a different character's perspective. How cool is that? I don’t think you have to read Gilead before you read Home, but I strongly encourage you to. It’s such a rich reading experience.

I really enjoyed this one, possibly even more than Gilead. I related to Glory much more than I related to pastor John Ames, and I loved how this book gave not only new answers but also new questions. Her relationship with her brother Jack (whose prodigal-son-esque return to town is the catalyst for these novels) is so nuanced and layered and ultimately beautiful.

The tone and writing style of this novel is also very different from that in Gilead, which makes sense given that Glory is a woman in her 30s and John Ames is an elderly, dying pastor. But the skill with which Robinson wields voice and tone is so impressive — it builds not only character but also setting and tension and plot.

I think the way Robinson has managed to write the same story FOUR TIMES and give us a whole new novel every time is so creative and brave and fun. I'll definitely be reading Lila and Jack! (I’m especially excited for Jack!)