Marilynne Robinson’s third novel is not showing any signs of lessoning her literary strength! It has recently been profiled in The New Yorker, Newsweek and The New York Sun.
Here is a beautiful description:
Hundreds of thousands were enthralled by the luminous voice of John Ames inGilead, 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.
I can always tell if I am going to like a book if I find myself copying down quotes directly from the pages of the novel. Here is a brief excerpt from the opening pages.
The house was beautiful for every comfort it had offered…It had a gracious heart, however awkward its’ appearance.
I’ve got this book and haven’t had a chance to start it. I’m glad to see you liked it.