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Home by Marilynne Robinson

 




Published: 2008, virago

Genre: fiction

Themes:  family, faith, theology, love, old age, approach of death

My rating (out of 5):  ❤❤❤❤❤

Home is the second in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead quartet of novels, and this time we see the family stories unfold from the perspective of the Reverend Boughton.  Boughton is a close friend of the Reverend John Ames whose story was told in the first book (see link below) and their lives have been interlinked since they were boys.

This second book is slightly longer than the first, and not written as a memoir in letter form so this allows the narration to dig deeper into how events unfolded and examine the emotional impact on various members of the family. 

As the story begins, Boughton is a widower in his old age and his daughter Glory has recently come home to help care for him after her own marriage failed.  All the other children have long since left home to set up their own homes, and all are leading productive lives except Jack who has never settled at anything and is a source of constant worry for his father.  Glory and Jack have a certain level of understanding, and if Jack appears in the family home she knows how to manage his behaviours and minimise the upset that he will inevitably cause his father.

The troubles that Jack caused for himself and his family started off as minor things that were at first explained away as misguided youth, but as time went on a pattern began to form and he drifted further and further from the family and any help they could offer.  Despite all his indiscretions, Jack retains a vulnerability that allows his father to hope that all is not completely lost, and he will at some point change his ways settle down.

The Guardian reviewer, Sarah Churchwell described this book as 'One of the saddest books I have ever loved'  and this is an accurate description of how I felt after reading it.  The writing is so well crafted that I sometimes paused in my reading to re-read a paragraph, or even a couple of pages, to make sure I had appreciated the meaning of each word as it was intended.  You can feel the air around the events and it is possible to imagine you watched things happen as if standing in the room.  

Writing these thoughts about Marilynne Robinson's books is a real challenge as nothing I can type will accurately convey the quality of the writing, but if you read the books they will always be the benchmark to use against other books.  Often with a series of books there is a point where you feel the writer has over-stretched the story and is cashing in on a successful idea.  Nothing could be further from the truth with this set as each time you finish a book, you immediately want to go back and read the others again in the light of new revelations.

See also my reviews on the other books in the Gilead quartet: 




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