Home

No, we aren't home yet, but I [Heath] just finished Marilynne Robinson's recent book by that name. Robinson previously won a Pulitzer for her book Gilead, which I absolutely loved. The book is narrated by John Ames, a pastor in his late-seventies who knows he hasn't long to live and will be leaving behind his middle-aged wife and seven-year old son. It's a highly introspective work, as the reader learns about Ames' family history - his grandfather was a fiery abolitionist preacher during the Civil War, his father a more staid mainline pastor - and also his musings on life, love, and God. I go back to some of the passages in the book time and again - Robinson can be just that insightful, her prose, at its best, really sparkles.



In any event, Home is in some ways a very different book. It's set in Gilead, Iowa, and the Ames family is present here too, but this time Robinson focuses primarily on their dear friends, the Boughtons. The story revolves around the relationships between Glory and Jack Boughton, two disenchanted, middle-aged siblings, and their dying father, Robert, during a short season when they are all home together. But if Home is thus more interactive than Gilead, the two books share similar themes - perennial disappointment and perennial hope - as well as a similar pace: agreeably slow. Robinson's meta-reflections might become tiresome if they weren't couched in such a subtle portrait of everyday life in rural America. At first I wondered if the characters here were believable - they seemed, at moments, almost too allegorical - but by the end of the book I was sold.



The bottom line, then: read Home, but be sure to read Gilead first. And let me know what you think.