As many of us prepare to go home for the holidays, Marilynne Robinson’s Home reminds us that there are times of both joy and pain when returning to the family and places of our childhood. This wonderfully written novel tells the story of the Boughtons, an Iowa family tormented by their past and unable to imagine a future. Glory, nearing midlife, returns to her childhood home in Gilead (the Gilead of Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel of the same name) to care for her dying father. Her older brother Jack, the prodigal son, comes home to his family after a twenty-year hiatus to try and make peace with his plagued past. Jack and Glory form a new bond based on their shared family secrets, past and present; and as they watch their father slipping away they must come to terms with who they have been and who they could become. Jack is a fabulous character; brilliant, endearing and rebellious. Perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his preacher-father, this black sheep of the family struggles to return home to face his demons. Jack is one of those people who is loved greatly but constantly disappoints those who love him. Glory and her father make great effort to help Jack forgive himself and in the process heal themselves. Home is a memorable story of the deepest and most common emotions; love, compassion, obligation, pain and fear.
I was surprised to have enjoyed this novel as much as I did because Robinson’s Pulitzer-prize winning novel Gilead was one of the few Pulitzers that I didn’t like at all. Home definitely has that religious-speak that forced me to abandon Gilead before I was finished, but Home is less religious and more reflective in its nature, more readable. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m about to embark on my own return for the holidays, which gave me such empathy and compassion for the characters of Home.
I was surprised to have enjoyed this novel as much as I did because Robinson’s Pulitzer-prize winning novel Gilead was one of the few Pulitzers that I didn’t like at all. Home definitely has that religious-speak that forced me to abandon Gilead before I was finished, but Home is less religious and more reflective in its nature, more readable. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m about to embark on my own return for the holidays, which gave me such empathy and compassion for the characters of Home.
Robinson writes, “And then their return to the pays natal, where the same old willows swept the same ragged lawns, where the same old prairie arose and bloomed as negligence permitted. Home. What kinder place could there be on earth, and why did it seem to them all like exile?” For many, and perhaps for Jack and Glory, we are no longer the people we were when we all lived at home with our families. We are different; different in ways that are not fully understood. Distance, time and life experience can sometimes create a disconnection that is keenly felt when returning home. Home is a universal paradox: where a familiar place intersects with an unfamiliar you.
May we all feel reconnected in the healthiest ways with home, family and ourselves this holiday season!
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