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hannahc24's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
charmanb's review against another edition
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
5.0
samw0327's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
dberrdy's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
4.75
aoyenhi's review against another edition
4.0
did NOT think i would be underlining every other page of this very white christian novel but here we are. it was utterly miserable and so much more bleak than it seems to let on. at the same time i liked it more than gilead, i think i appreciate the messages being conveyed in gilead more than i did in home.
also…lots of reviews ive read said this was super boring and i can’t disagree but also i want to add that i just wasn’t bored. i don’t even know how i wasn’t bc i have horrible attention span. but marilynne robinson would be like (beautifully) “glory made breakfast without realizing it was 3 in the morning. jack laughed at her” and i’d just be like oh my fucking god i simply have to keep reading i need to know more
also…lots of reviews ive read said this was super boring and i can’t disagree but also i want to add that i just wasn’t bored. i don’t even know how i wasn’t bc i have horrible attention span. but marilynne robinson would be like (beautifully) “glory made breakfast without realizing it was 3 in the morning. jack laughed at her” and i’d just be like oh my fucking god i simply have to keep reading i need to know more
dukegregory's review against another edition
5.0
This is Gilead without the epistolary structure and with a bit less precision, but, damn does it pack even more life-affirming beauty and some of the most nuanced characterization possibly ever (?). So much emotion and drama without fanfare. Robinson always cuts any possibility of melodrama. I also feel like this is a contender for one of the best representations of a sibling relationship ever. Many evers here.
I just want to log this quote here, since I feel it to be so significant in its grace and humanity. I would like to have it easily available for reference.
"Della had met Jack on a rainy afternoon. He was just out of prison, and he was wearing the suit—almost new, he said—he had bought with the money that was supposed to have brought him home for his mother’s funeral. The suit he sold because it made him look like a minister. And he had come by an umbrella somehow. Just the terror of his release into the world, certain he had lost his family for good and all this time, would have made him wry and incandescent, and so would the inadvertent respectability of a dark suit and a working umbrella. And there before him was a lady in need of assistance. She had said, “Thank you, Reverend.” Such mild eyes, such a gentle voice. He had forgotten that, the pleasure of being spoken to kindly. Finally he told her he was not a man of the cloth. So began a long instruction in whatever he could trust her to forgive.
She has forgiven so much, he said. You can have no idea. And how would she forgive this, that she felt she had to come into Gilead as if it were a foreign and a hostile country? Did anyone know otherwise? Worn, modest, countrified Gilead, Gilead of the sunflowers. She carried herself with the tense poise of a woman who felt she was being watched, wondered about. Jack could hardly bring himself to dream she would come here, and there was reason enough to doubt, though he could not stop himself from dreaming of it, either. They had the boy with them, Jack would be frightened for the boy, so they had to be back to Missouri before it was dark. They had a place to stay in Missouri.
She thought, Maybe this Robert will come back someday. Young men are rarely cautious. What of Jack will there be in him? And I will be almost old. I will see him standing in the road by the oak tree, and I will know him by his tall man’s slouch, the hands on the hips. I will invite him onto the porch and he will reply with something civil and Southern, “Yes, ma’am, I might could,” or whatever it is they say. And he will be very kind to me. He is Jack’s son, and Southerners are especially polite to older women. He will be curious about the place, though his curiosity will not override his good manners. He will talk to me a little while, too shy to tell me why he has come, and then he will thank me and leave, walking backward a few steps, thinking, Yes, the barn is still there, yes, the lilacs, even the pot of petunias. This was my father’s house. And I will think, He is young. He cannot know that my whole life has come down to this moment.
That he has answered his father’s prayers.
The Lord is wonderful."
I just want to log this quote here, since I feel it to be so significant in its grace and humanity. I would like to have it easily available for reference.
"Della had met Jack on a rainy afternoon. He was just out of prison, and he was wearing the suit—almost new, he said—he had bought with the money that was supposed to have brought him home for his mother’s funeral. The suit he sold because it made him look like a minister. And he had come by an umbrella somehow. Just the terror of his release into the world, certain he had lost his family for good and all this time, would have made him wry and incandescent, and so would the inadvertent respectability of a dark suit and a working umbrella. And there before him was a lady in need of assistance. She had said, “Thank you, Reverend.” Such mild eyes, such a gentle voice. He had forgotten that, the pleasure of being spoken to kindly. Finally he told her he was not a man of the cloth. So began a long instruction in whatever he could trust her to forgive.
She has forgiven so much, he said. You can have no idea. And how would she forgive this, that she felt she had to come into Gilead as if it were a foreign and a hostile country? Did anyone know otherwise? Worn, modest, countrified Gilead, Gilead of the sunflowers. She carried herself with the tense poise of a woman who felt she was being watched, wondered about. Jack could hardly bring himself to dream she would come here, and there was reason enough to doubt, though he could not stop himself from dreaming of it, either. They had the boy with them, Jack would be frightened for the boy, so they had to be back to Missouri before it was dark. They had a place to stay in Missouri.
She thought, Maybe this Robert will come back someday. Young men are rarely cautious. What of Jack will there be in him? And I will be almost old. I will see him standing in the road by the oak tree, and I will know him by his tall man’s slouch, the hands on the hips. I will invite him onto the porch and he will reply with something civil and Southern, “Yes, ma’am, I might could,” or whatever it is they say. And he will be very kind to me. He is Jack’s son, and Southerners are especially polite to older women. He will be curious about the place, though his curiosity will not override his good manners. He will talk to me a little while, too shy to tell me why he has come, and then he will thank me and leave, walking backward a few steps, thinking, Yes, the barn is still there, yes, the lilacs, even the pot of petunias. This was my father’s house. And I will think, He is young. He cannot know that my whole life has come down to this moment.
That he has answered his father’s prayers.
The Lord is wonderful."
jonscott9's review against another edition
3.0
It's important to note that this novel is not a sequel (nor a prequel) to Robinson's glorious Gilead. It's rather a companion book, with a story that could have happened concurrently with that of Gilead.
More poetry masquerading as prose from Robinson, a master of letters. This one's not as taut top to bottom as Gilead, but it's beautiful, nonetheless, revolving this time around John Ames's friend Boughton, and his daughter Glory and some-kind-of-prodigal son Jack. It's mostly about Glory and Jack, in all their wounded sibling interplay.
Robinson is deft at writing and describing dialogue. Lengthy, believable, unadorned conversations. Convos that matter and that are striking for how simple they are.
This book is stirring. Flat-out stirring. It's not exactly plot-tastic, but that's common with her books. Like Gilead and Housekeeping, you have to drink these words slowly, although not quite like those two. This one can read more quickly.
The last 8-10 pages were especially poignant, and the story ended in the only way it probably could. Ah! So much sadness and pain and light and beauty!
More poetry masquerading as prose from Robinson, a master of letters. This one's not as taut top to bottom as Gilead, but it's beautiful, nonetheless, revolving this time around John Ames's friend Boughton, and his daughter Glory and some-kind-of-prodigal son Jack. It's mostly about Glory and Jack, in all their wounded sibling interplay.
Robinson is deft at writing and describing dialogue. Lengthy, believable, unadorned conversations. Convos that matter and that are striking for how simple they are.
This book is stirring. Flat-out stirring. It's not exactly plot-tastic, but that's common with her books. Like Gilead and Housekeeping, you have to drink these words slowly, although not quite like those two. This one can read more quickly.
The last 8-10 pages were especially poignant, and the story ended in the only way it probably could. Ah! So much sadness and pain and light and beauty!
blanchak's review against another edition
3.0
Beautiful prose but didn’t grab me quite like Gilead. I think it’s hard for me to access a lot of feeling for a broken-man-journey
faintgirl's review against another edition
1.0
They kicked off the Curious Tale of the Dog in the Night Time and such for this? My Mum recommended Home, but also that I start by reading Gilead, which is not a precursor but an addition to this story. The two books describe the same story but from two different perspectives, a neat little idea but that's where the fun ends with these sorry novels. The first, Gilead, tells of wild boy Jack's return to his family from the viewpoint of the local pastor and friend of his father, Reverend Ames. The second tells the same tale from the point of Glory, the younjgest sister who returned to the family homne to care for her ailing father. Gilead bored me to tears. I found Ames stilted, confined, and repetitive. His fears about the nature of the prodigal son were interesting but unfounded, and as a character he never made a real effort to challenge them. 300+ pages of an old man set in his ways, dull as dishwater.
The second book, Home, and the one that made it to the list, is an improvement on this. Glory is a more likeable character, a woman badly done by at the hands of a scoundrel of a man and the constraints of the society of Middle America. But Jack is weak, pathetic, and his constant attempts to address his lack of faith have the circularity and dullness of the constant moaning of the teens in the new Twilight film. His poor father is losing his mind and tries his best to deal with this loser of a son, but I would have lost patience with him about 20 seconds after he arrived in the door.
Throughout the whole novel, very little happens. No events shake this little township, no one is forced to change their minds, no conclusions are ever really drawn from the constant agonising over past issues. It's dull, it completely fails to be moving, and I have absolutely no idea why this belongs on the list. Very, very glad it's over, and I won't be going near Marilynne Robinson again.
The second book, Home, and the one that made it to the list, is an improvement on this. Glory is a more likeable character, a woman badly done by at the hands of a scoundrel of a man and the constraints of the society of Middle America. But Jack is weak, pathetic, and his constant attempts to address his lack of faith have the circularity and dullness of the constant moaning of the teens in the new Twilight film. His poor father is losing his mind and tries his best to deal with this loser of a son, but I would have lost patience with him about 20 seconds after he arrived in the door.
Throughout the whole novel, very little happens. No events shake this little township, no one is forced to change their minds, no conclusions are ever really drawn from the constant agonising over past issues. It's dull, it completely fails to be moving, and I have absolutely no idea why this belongs on the list. Very, very glad it's over, and I won't be going near Marilynne Robinson again.