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Home: A Novel Hardcover – September 2, 2008

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Marilynne Robinson (Author)
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Marilynne Robinson (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars 371 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (September 2, 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0374299102
  • ISBN-13: 978-0374299101
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.9 x 8.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (371 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #311,822 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsHeart-wrenching, haunting, beautiful...
By D. Kanigan VINE VOICE on September 6, 2008
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
This story is set in the 1950's in a small rural town in Iowa (Gilead). Robert Boughton, a retired and aging minister, is in poor health. Glory Boughton, 38, his youngest daughter, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father and to regroup after the failure of a longstanding relationship and the evaporation of her dreams of home, marriage and children.

"I am 38 years old, she would say to herself as she tidied up after supper. I have a master's degree. I taught high school English for 13 years. I was a good teacher. What have I done with my life? What has become of it? It is as if I had a dream of adult life and woke up from it, still here in my parents' house."

Jack Broughton, his father's most beloved son, also returns home after a twenty-year disappearance - looking for peace, forgiveness, a refuge and reconciliation - with his Father, his family and a community which he ran from after earning a reputation as a thief and a scoundrel.

"Jack was exceptional in every way he could be, including of course, truancy and misfeasance."

Glory and Jack unravel their personal histories slowly - one slight pull at a time on a large ball of string. The simplicity of the story is tied with tension, heartwarming and difficult memories, conflicted emotions and most of all - with love - among family members and Father to son. Glory and Jack slowly build a relationship while caring for their Father.Read more ›
18 Comments 407 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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5.0 out of 5 starsThe Prodigal at Home
By Roger Brunyate TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on September 25, 2008
Format: Hardcover
How simple it seems, that story of the Prodigal Son! The wanderer returns; his joyful father falls on his shoulder and orders the fatted calf to be killed; the stay-at-home sibling is resentful for a while, but presumably learns to deal with it. For the story stops there. There is no tomorrow. The Bible doesn't ask what happens in the weeks and months after that. Is the family happily reunited? Does the Prodigal never yearn to be off again? Where does life go from here? These are some of the many questions posed by Marilynne Robinson in her latest novel, HOME, a sister work to her Pulitzer Prize-winning GILEAD.

HOME is not a sequel to GILEAD, but a parallel novel, taking place in the same town (Gilead, Iowa), at exactly the same time (1956), and involving many of the same characters. Readers of the earlier novel will recall that the town has two elderly preachers, John Ames and Robert Boughton, close friends since childhood. In HOME, the action shifts from Ames' house to that of Boughton, a wonderful old man magnificently characterized through his way of talking, warmly benevolent with unexpected edges of granite. At the start of the book, his youngest daughter Glory, now 38, returns home to care for her father; she appears to be in retreat from problems of her own, but their nature only gradually becomes clear. A little later, Jack Boughton, the black sheep of the family, arrives after an absence of twenty years. Jack appears in GILEAD also; some of the information from the earlier book is revealed immediately, but we learn much more about his tormented life as the book goes on.Read more ›
8 Comments 142 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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5.0 out of 5 starsAs near perfect a companion...
By Liturgy Geek on September 17, 2008
Format: Hardcover
...to Gilead as one could hope for. And hope, it seems to me - hope realized, hope deferred, hope in spite of reality - is at the core of this book. I saw this book at an airport bookstore and as soon as I saw that it returned to Gilead (didn't even finish reading the jacket), I purchased it. However, it took me some time to open it, because frankly I was afraid that it might not be as good as Gilead, that something from the perfection of that book might be ruined in the attempt to return there.

I needn't have worried, nor should you, if you read and loved Gilead. The perfect ambiguity of Gilead's ending is preserved, and we learn more about all the characters that were most real to me - Robert, Glory, and Jack. We meet characters only alluded to previously, and what a wonder they are! As others have noted, it is a slow, deliberate novel - though certainly wordier and less spare than Gilead. But it is a slow, deliberate story, and one to take your time with.

And hope - we always return to it. What hope and wonder are displayed in this little book, even in the midst of alcoholism, depression, small-town drama, racial conflicts, dementia. Don't be confused, however, but it's not romantic, sentimental and syrupy hope. It is deeply, profoundly, faithful hope - more like what John Ames describes at the end of Gilead: "...whatever hope becomes after it begins to weary a little, then weary a little more." A good ending can make a novel, and this one casts a wonderful vision.
1 Comment 75 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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1.0 out of 5 starsA veil and a vale of tears
By K. Cameron on October 27, 2008
Format: Hardcover
I am not going to repeat the plot, since many other reviewers have done so very competently. First let me say I am a Robinson fan. I think Gilead is one of the top ten books I have ever read. So imagine my disappointment when I finally found myself on the last page of Home, and closed the book with utter relief.

I believe that in Home, Robinson lost the writer's discipline she exercised so marvelously in Gilead. The characters never come to life. Jack is a kind of under-stated caricature of the "black-sheep" trying to redeem himself. I did not find him believable. He seemed to be another Ames/Boughten lightly clothed in the garb of a sinner. He was too decent, apologetic, and insightful to be any kind of black-sheep I have ever met. Glory is a caricature of the left-behind woman. She is allegedly intelligent and educated, and yearns for a different life, but for some reason is paralyzed and incapacitated. Both Jack and Glory seem almost embalmed in amber - but it is never clear why, and this is why the characters do not come alive for me. (Predestination?)

Beyond character development, there is dialogue, scene, and plot. On the matter of the first, the dialogue is fantastically tedious. Glory cries. Jack says he is sorry ad nauseum. On scene, there is just about one scene in the entire book. It is more like a play than a novel. The characters migrate from kitchen to bed to barn to living room, over and over again, with almost nothing changing each time the scene is revisited. Jack says something; it bothers his father; Jack apologizes; Glory weeps. Good grief. On plot, the prodigal son arrives sinful, he continues to sin, and he leaves a sinner. The father loves the son at the beginning, at the middle, and then loses his faculties so .. it is unclear.Read more ›
8 Comments 69 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Extraordinary!!!!!

Published 5 days ago by Harvey M. Adelstein
3.0 out of 5 starsTheologically Disappointing

I read GILEAD some time ago, and recently read LILA. As a result of loving LILA, I completed the trilogy by reading HOME. Of the three, it is my least favorite. Read more

Published 14 days ago by Carolyn Plemmons
4.0 out of 5 starsThink I like Lila better

Can get mired down at times in the seeming repetitive minutiae but the human drama is compelling and keeps moving. Read more

Published 15 days ago by Kathy Kieselhorst
4.0 out of 5 starsSolid but behind gilead

A solid story of home, redemption,family. Not as wel written as Gilead. Nonetheless it is worth picking up sometime. Thanks

Published 15 days ago by kent delay
5.0 out of 5 stars"What does it mean to come home?"

It is impossible for me to consider HOME by itself, isolated from Robinson's previous novel, GILEAD. The setting of both is Gilead, Iowa, in the summer of 1956. Read more

Published 16 days ago by R. M. Peterson
2.0 out of 5 starsTwo Stars

Although it slow moving and pretty depressing it is well written.

Published 29 days ago by Anne B
5.0 out of 5 starsIt's heart-wrenching and you wish things would be better for the...

A very powerful story. It's heart-wrenching and you wish things would be better for the protagonists. My only regret is that there was no resolution on the fate of Jack Boughton. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Rey.M.S.
4.0 out of 5 starsNot Robinson's best.

Not the best of Robinson's books, in my opinion. Both Gideon and Lila better. I think Lila may be the best book I have ever read - and I am a reader.

Published 1 month ago by bbfan
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Wonderful book on family love & forgiveness

Published 1 month ago by Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsI love this book.

Really great book! Written the way good books were written years ago. Great metaphors and strong character development about the relationship between a spinster sister with her... Read more

Published 1 month ago by Amazon Customer

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