Marilynne Robinson is an astonishing writer. I love her writing. It’s really perfect, there’s no other way for me to describe it. She assumes a perfect voice, her diction is impeccable, her sense of pathos and sentiment is pitch-perfect. She is a literary giantess.
HOME is about Glory, the daughter of Reverend Boughton, who is the friend of Reverend John Ames, the protagonist of GILEAD. (GILEAD is also perfect.) Glory’s heart-wrendingly rendered, a figure of purity, sense, and loss. She is taking care of her father in his old age when her brother, Jack, returns home after being absent for twenty years. The book is about Jack by way of Glory, actually, and she’s a wonderful prism to look at Jack through, and she is a wonderful prism to look at. I love Glory’s maternal attitude, her desperation to heal wounds, her love of baking and cooking. Her solicitousness. She is forever concerned about the well-being of those around her, but not at the expense of some selfishness, some reality.
Jack and she slowly bond, they slowly learn to trust each other. When everyone in the house of their youth slowly declines in health, both mental and physical, it is their budding friendship, and not their religions, that is able to, not save, not comfort, but sustain. The book seems to build slowly but surely to the final pages, when Jack’s trust in Glory is tested in a way you can’t suspect unless you’ve already read GILEAD. The anticipation of this inevitable test will either take you by surprise, or make you anxious throughout HOME. The climax of the novel is the ultimate test Glory’s of character, which is written beautifully and calmly, and such that you will wish you could see Glory from Jack’s point of view, too.
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