Published: 2020, virago
Genre: fiction
Themes: crime, conscience, faith, relationships, racism
My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤
When I started writing the reviews on the Gilead quartet of novels I recommended that people read them in order otherwise it would be difficult to understand why people in the books behave as they do. Now that I have finished Jack, I stand by that recommendation as I think you would really struggle with this one if you didn't know Jack's family background.
The first books begin with the stories of two preachers in the fictional town of Gilead in Iowa. The Reverend John Ames is a quiet contemplative man who was widowed as a young man, and in his old age takes a second wife, Lila, who is a lot younger than he is. His close friend who preaches at a different church is The Reverend Boughton who has eight children and lives his life in accordance with the scriptures and spending his spare time debating theological points with Ames.
All of Boughton's children have grown up to be decent law-abiding adults, with the exception of Jack, who was never able to conform to what was expected of him, and as an adult has become a petty thief with an itinerant lifestyle moving from one bad situation to another. Even after years of worrying over what will become of Jack, Boughton continues to live in hope that he will turn his life around one day and settle down.
We know from the previous books that in the distant past of Jack's youth, he dated an impressionable young girl from a desperately poor family, and left her with a baby that she was barely old enough to look after. I was expecting the book to dig deep into how that ill advised relationship, but the story begins much later in Jack's life with tiny snippets of that earlier story fed in so subtly that at first they are barely there at all. We are eventually told a little more about how Jack tried to impress the young girl by wearing his brother's college sweater, but not much else, and the tragic death of the child when she was not much more than a baby is glossed over.
The main theme of the book is Jack's relationship with Della, who is a young black woman that came to St Louis to take up an appointment as an English teacher. At a time of colour segregation, their relationship is not only frowned upon by society, but marriage between the races is illegal. They meet on a stormy night when Della drops some of the papers she is carrying and Jack gallantly steps up to offer his umbrella and gather up the papers out of the rain. He then walks her home to allow her to continue to stay under the umbrella and she invites him in for tea and an opportunity to get out of the rain for a while.
He is wearing a dark suit that he bought for his mother's funeral, and Della at first assumes he is a preacher of some sort, and consequently doesn't see him as a threat. He clearly knows about literature so they have something in common, and as they talk, he tells her about the beautiful flowers in a cemetery in the town. Della has never been there, because it is where they bury white people, but some time later she goes there on the off chance of meeting him again. What she doesn't know is that Jack often goes there to sleep when he is hiding from people and will only be found there as the gates are closing.
The night she goes to the cemetery (almost a year after their first meeting) Jack hears her voice and they end up spending the night behind the locked gates. There follows a very long section of some 70 pages where Jack and Della talk through the night, and I think this is where readers will start to struggle if they don't know the background. The 70 pages are not wasted, as we come to understand how being in the graveyard alone with Jack can easily cost Della her job, her home and the respect of her family. Her father is also a preacher and the family have high expectations of her.
As they talk there are pauses and Jack realises there is a difference between a person being just quiet, as opposed to being silent if they have taken offence. This is an example of the kind of human observations made in the book that is something you will know, but had never consciously considered sufficiently to make the observation yourself.
Later in the book there is another extended section of Jack's thoughts as he spends the night in a dark and empty dance hall where he has been working as a dance instructor. It is in these passages of internal dialogue that we see some of Marilynne Robinson's most original thinking:
'Being there alone was a bad idea. For one thing, he realized instantly that the big freckled mirrors would be reflecting that darkness, and he could not tell if he could see any difference between the reflected darkness and the darkness itself.'
I had to stop and think about that for a few seconds as I had never thought about the reflection of darkness, but of course it's there.
By the time we get to then end of the book, the story seems to stop abruptly and leave the reader with unanswered questions. Again, anyone who has read the previous books will know that Marilynne Robinson has already written a little about what comes next and I wanted more. Maybe there is another book to be had? Maybe one called Della, or maybe Glory, who is Jack's very caring sister? Time will tell.
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