Home - BookWyrm

First Edition, 325 pages

English language

Published Sept. 2, 2008 by Farrar Straus and Giroux.

ISBN:: 978-0-374-29910-1
OCLC Number:: 213300725

(5 reviews)

Hundreds of thousands were enthralled by the luminous voice of John Ames in Gilead, Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel. Now Robinson returns with a brilliantly imagined retelling of the prodigal son parable, set at the same moment and in the same Iowa town, 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 …

Hundreds of thousands were enthralled by the luminous voice of John Ames in Gilead, Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel. Now Robinson returns with a brilliantly imagined retelling of the prodigal son parable, set at the same moment and in the same Iowa town, 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.

2 editions

unicorndeburgh reviewed Home by Marilynne Robinson

Review of 'Home' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This is the sort-of sequel to Gilead. It's certainly a standalone novel in its own right, but reading Gilead first will make it richer. Also, then you'll have had the joy of reading the excellent Gilead, so that's good!

A friend was saying something about how he didn't like literary fiction, but preferred genres such as mystery or science fiction that were entertaining. I love those genres, too, but I had just read this book, and it gripped me every bit as much — or more — than any thriller. I was on tenterhooks as to whether Jack was going to hold it together. I gasped when Glory's father commented on the TV news. The action all takes place in one house, with a dying father, his adult daughter and son, over the course of a summer. A garden is tidied. A car is fixed up. Hearts break.