The next novel on my reading list is
Home by Marilynne Robinson. My wife, Cheri, has been reading this book while leading a discussion group on it for
MacLaurinCSF at the University of Minnesota. The book is a continuation of the story Robinson began in her novel,
Gilead, which Cheri and I both really enjoyed. Cheri tells me that
Home has been even more moving and beautiful than
Gilead, so I'm really looking forward to getting started this week.
From Publisher's Weekly...
Robinson's beautiful new novel, a companion piece to her Pulitzer Prize–winning Gilead,
is an elegant variation on the parable of the prodigal son's return.
The son is Jack Boughton, one of the eight children of Robert Boughton,
the former Gilead, Iowa, pastor, who now, in 1957, is a widowed and
dying man.
Jack returns home shortly after his sister, 38-year-old
Glory, moves in to nurse their father, and it is through Glory's eyes
that we see Jack's drama unfold. When Glory last laid eyes on Jack, she
was 16, and he was leaving Gilead with a reputation as a thief and a
scoundrel, having just gotten an underage girl pregnant.
By his account,
he'd since lived as a vagrant, drunk and jailbird until he fell in with
a woman named Della in St. Louis. By degrees, Jack and Glory bond while
taking care of their father, but when Jack's letters to Della are
returned unopened, Glory has to deal with Jack's relapse into bad habits
and the effect it has on their father. In giving an ancient drama of
grace and perdition such a strong domestic setup, Robinson stakes a
fierce claim to a divine recognition behind the rituals of home.
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