I've just finished reading HOME by Marilynne Robinson. Robinson's previous book GILEAD was set in the same town (Gilead) and both books place particular emphasis on the character of Jack. HOME could be described as a sequel to the Pulitzer prize-winning GILEAD but it could also be described as the second half of the first book.
I've read a few reviews of the book; Newsweek, New York Times and the New Yorker but it is the review of Linda McCullough Moore from ChristianityToday.com which I feel spoke best to me of the plot, themes and language of this beautiful book. An excerpt:
"...But you'll be wanting now to know about the plot of this new novel. A man, Jack Boughton, comes home - yes, to Gilead - to his father and his sister, Glory, after twenty silent years away. He gardens, fixes the car, visits the neighbors, and goes to church a couple times. Then goes away again.
...And if this Jack Boughton is the Prodigal, he's one whose father slaughters not the fattened calf, but any hope of lasting ease. The Prodigal whose older brother traveled six times to St Louis to search the sorry streets for him. But Robinson would have Jack be more Lazarus than Prodigal, Lazarus 'with the memory of cerements about him,' no matter he is washed and shaved, his hair slicked down, dressed up in a suit he has dry-cleaned with dabs of gasoline. Lazarus who wishes they'd all stop studying him, stop falling silent when he walks into the room...He's Abraham - he's told - abandoning Ishmael; he's Caleb and Joshua still thinking things possible even after forty years of wandering in the desert. He is David, his sin ever before him, still, man after God's own heart, rehearsing questions about the sins of the fathers being visited on sons. Jack is Jonah telling God: I fled because I feared your mercy; he's Moses stuttering: God, Please! Pick somebody else. He is Joseph, father-favorite, given a coat of many colors woven out of expectations - that he be happy...
It's all been told before. But that's the point. The story's old. All stories are. We do not read for that. We read to know just what we are to make of the stories we already know. We read to ask how are we, knowing what we know, expected to get out of bed tomorrow morning. To stay alive till then. Some days to flourish...
...Robinson would have us know things. Have us know forgiveness precedes not follows understanding. Forgive, she says, and 'you will be ready to understand, and that is the posture of grace.' She paints with tiny brush strokes, showing 'Sympathy (that) would corrupt something wonderful, which secrecy and a kind of shame kept safe."
I could quote and quote from this book. Read it. The characters will impress themselves on your heart. "Hi, I'm Jack! Hi, I'm Glory! Hi there, I'm Rev Boughton."
I think the mark of any great book is that in some way it changes who we are, particularly in the way we come to a deeper understanding of not only others but how we ourselves relate to them and ourselves too. To take a leaf out of Glory's book I'll quote a scripture! "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind and love your neighbour as yourself." For all its Calvanistic undertones, I believe this is what is at the heart of HOME.