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Review

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.

Annotation

Readers of Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning GILEAD will find the plot of her novel HOME familiar. It takes place next door to the setting for GILEAD, and involves a similar event: the return of Jack Boughton, the black sheep and wayward son of the aging preacher Robert Boughton. One of the marvels of GILEAD was Robinson's ability to make such rich and subtle drama out of so little plot, and so its astonishing that she can mine nearly identical material for her third novel, and still uncover untold joys, poetry, and tragedy. Told from the point of view of Jack's sister, Glory Boughton, whose own life has not lived up to expectations, HOME is a deeply textured, nuanced, word-perfect masterpiece about two forlorn children returning to their dilapidated family home. Their attempts to find grace and meaning in their bare and unfulfilled lives has the quality of a spiritual journey, and the pain and beauty of great literature. HOME was selected by the New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of 2008 and was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award in Fiction.

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