Home

A National Book Award Finalist

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

A New York Times Bestseller

A Washington Post Best Book of the Year

A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year

A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year

A NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALISTWINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE

A New York Times Bestseller A Washington Post Best Book of the Year A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year

Hailed as "incandescent," "magnificent," and "a literary miracle" (Entertainment Weekly), hundreds of thousands of readers were enthralled by Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. Now Robinson returns with a brilliantly imagined retelling of the prodigal son parable, set at the same moment and in the same Iowa town as Gilead. The Reverend Boughton's hell-raising son, Jack, has come home after twenty years away. Artful and devious in his youth, now an alcoholic carrying two decades worth of secrets, he is perpetually at odds with his traditionalist father, though he remains his most beloved child. As Jack tries to make peace with his father, he begins to forge an intense bond with his sister Glory, herself returning home with a broken heart and turbulent past. Home is a luminous and healing book about families, family secrets, and faith from one of America's most beloved and acclaimed authors.

Marilynne Robinson is the author of the novels Gileadwinner of the Pulitzer Prizeand Housekeeping, and Home, and two books of nonfiction, Mother Country and The Death of Adam. She teaches at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. Winner of the Orange PrizeA National Book Critics Circle Award FinalistA National Book Award Finalist

Longlisted for the International IMPAC Literary AwardWinner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

Winner of the Christianity Today Book Award

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book

A Los Angeles Times Favorite Book of the Year

A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year

A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Best Book of the Year

A Seattle Times Best Book of the Year

A Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Year

A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year

A Library Journal Best Book of the Year

Marilynne Robinson returns to the small town in Iowa where her Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, Gilead, was set. Home is an entirely independent novel that is set concurrently in the same locale, this time in the household of Reverend Robert Boughton, Amess closest friend. Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jackthe prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty yearscomes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with ongoing trouble and pain. Jack, a bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold a job, is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Boughtons most beloved child. Brilliant, lovable, and wayward, Jack forges an intense bond with Glory and engages painfully with Ames, his godfather and namesake.  Their story is one of families, family secrets, and the passing of the generations, about love, death, faith, and healing. "It is a book unsparing in its acknowledgement of sin and unstinting in its belief in the possibility of grave.  It is at once hard and forgiving, bitter and joyful, fanatical and serene.  It is a wild, eccentric radical work of literature that grows out of the broadest, most fertile, most familiar native literary tradition.  What a strange old book it is.”The New York Times Book Review

"Home is a companion piece to Gilead, an account of the same time (the summer of 1956), in the same place (Gilead, Iowa), with the same cast of characters as the earlier novel. Each book is strengthened and deepened by a reading of the other . . . The two books, different in their form and approach as well as in the details they reveal and the stories they ultimately tell, are an enactment of humanity's broader dance of ever-attempted, ever-failing communicationthrough a glass darkly. This is not, of itself, a novel endeavor for the novel (Edith Wharton once wrote, with lyrical concise wit, 'I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story'); rather it is the gravitas and patience with which Robinson, whose 1998 book of essays The Death of Adam revealed her rigorous Christian spiritual inquiry, has, in these two novels, channeled that rigor in fictional form; the result is two works of art of impressively unfashionable seriousness and engagement . . . Robinson, throughout Home, is tackling almost the opposite of what she undertook in Gilead: rather than granting a direct and illuminated voice to a single, thoughtful soul, she stands backwriting in the third person, albeit in a third person that privileges Glory's point of viewand allows her characters to perform their small daily rituals, to have their conversations, to live through their misunderstandings, each in his or her particular isolation. Crucially, she allows at least very distinct experiencesthat of the devout, to which John Ames, Robert Boughton, and even Glory could be said to belong; and Jack's secular universeto interact with one another, each with its own language and its own jurisprudence . . . What is remarkable about Homeand why it is, to this reader, an even stronger accomplishment than its companion volume; not in spite of its longueurs and its repetitiveness but because of themis that it is both a spiritual and a mundane accounting."Claire Messud, The New York Review of Books

"Home is a book full of doubleness and paradox, at once serene and volcanic, ruthless and forgiving. It is an anguished pastoral, a tableau of decency and compassion that is also an angry and devastating indictment of moral cowardice and unrepentant, unacknowledged sin. It would be inaccurate to say that the novel represents yet another breathless exposé of religious hypocrisy, or a further excavation of the dark secrets that supposedly lurk beneath the placid surface of small-town life. When Robinson writes that 'complacency was consistent with the customs and manners of Presbyterian Gilead and was therefore assumed to be justified in every case,' she is not scoring an easy, sarcastic point. There is real kindness and generosity in the town, and its theological disposition is accordingly tolerant and charitable . . . Readers who come to Home after Gilead will know that during his 20-year exile Jack met a black woman and had a child with her. His return to Gilead is in part a reconnaissance mission, an attempt to discover if the town might be a suitable home for a mixed-race family. In 1956, there are 'no colored people in Gilead,' but it has not always been that way. They left after their church was burned, even though Ames remembers the arson as 'a little nuisance fire' that happened long ago. And Amess 'shabby old town' is a place where a black family is afraid to be out on the road when the sun goes down. These ugly facts complicate the beauty of Home, but the way Robinson embeds them in the novel is

"An exquisite, often ruefully funny meditation on redemption."--Megan O'Grady, Vogue

"An anguished pastoral, a tableau of decency and compassion that is also an angry and devastating indictment of moral cowardice and unrepentant, unacknowledged sin. . . . . Beautiful."--A. O. Scott, The New York Times Book Review

"Rich and resonant . . . Gilead and Home fit with and around each other perfectly, each complete on its own, yet enriching and enlivening the other. But both are books of such beauty and power."--Emily Barton, Los Angeles Times

"Marilynne Robinson is so powerful a writer that she can reshape how we read."--Mark Athitakis, Chicago Sun-Times

"Home begins simply, eschewing obvious verbal fineness, and slowly grows in luxury--its last fifty pages are magnificently moving. . . . Powerful."--James Wood, The New Yorker

"When Marilynne Robinson writes a new book, its an event."--Pat MacEnulty, Charlotte Observer

Home is an entirely independent, deeply affecting novel that takes place concurrently in the same locale, this time in the household of Reverend Robert Boughton, Ames's closest friend. Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack — the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years — comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain. Jack is one of the great characters in recent literature. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold a job, he is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Boughton's most beloved child.

Brilliant, lovable, and wayward, Jack forges an intense bond with Glory and engages painfully with Ames, his godfather and namesake. Home is a moving and healing book about families, family secrets, and the passing of the generations, about love and death and faith. It is Robinson's greatest work, an unforgettable embodiment of the deepest and most universal emotions.

WINNER OF THE ORANGE PRIZE 2009
A 2008 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE
A New York Times Bestseller
A Washington Post Best Book of the Year
A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year
A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year

Hailed as "incandescent," "magnificent," and "a literary miracle" (Entertainment Weekly), hundreds of thousands of readers were enthralled by Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. Now Robinson returns with a brilliantly imagined retelling of the prodigal son parable, set at the same moment and in the same Iowa town as Gilead. The Reverend Boughton's hell-raising son, Jack, has come home after twenty years away. Artful and devious in his youth, now an alcoholic carrying two decades worth of secrets, he is perpetually at odds with his traditionalist father, though he remains his most beloved child. As Jack tries to make peace with his father, he begins to forge an intense bond with his sister Glory, herself returning home with a broken heart and turbulent past. Home is a luminous and healing book about families, family secrets, and faith from one of America's most beloved and acclaimed authors.

Now Robinson returns with a brilliantly imagined retelling of the prodigal son parable, set at the same moment and in the same Iowa town as Gilead. The Reverend Boughton's hell-raising son, Jack, has come home after twenty years away. Artful and devious in his youth, now an alcoholic carrying two decades worth of secrets, he is perpetually at odds with his traditionalist father, though he remains his most beloved child. As Jack tries to make peace with his father, he begins to forge an intense bond with his sister Glory, herself returning home with a broken heart and turbulent past. Home is a luminous and healing book about families, family secrets, and faith from one of America's most beloved and acclaimed authors.

Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father, Reverend Robert Boughton. Soon her brother, Jack--the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years--comes home too, looking for refuge, and to make peace with his turbulent past. When he was a child he gained a reputation as artful and devious; as a young man he brought continual shame to the family; and now, an alcoholic who cannot hold a job, he is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father--though he remains Boughton's most beloved child. Jack forges an intense bond with Glory and engages painfully with Ames, his godfather and namesake, and the narrator of Robinsons previous novel Gilead.

Home is a moving and healing book about families, family secrets, and the passing of the generations, about love and death and faith.

Discussion Questions

1. What does "home" mean to Robert Broughton and his children? What does the Broughton house signify to his family? With whom do they feel most at home?

2. How does Glorys opinion of Jack change throughout the novel? What enables them to trust each other? In what ways is that trust strained? How does their relationship compare to yours with your siblings?

3. How is the Broughton household affected by the presence of a television set? How does this reflect a shift that took place in many households throughout America in the 1950s? Were you surprised by Robert Broughtons comments about African Americans, and by his reaction to the televised race riots?

4. Why do you think Robert loves Jack best, despite Jacks shortcomings? What is your understanding of Jacks wayward behavior? How would you have responded to his theological questions regarding redemption?

5. Discuss the friendship between John Ames and Robert Broughton. What has sustained it for so many years? How did they nurture each others intellectual lives, approaching life from Congregationalist and Presbyterian perspectives?

6. What did Glorys mother teach her about the role of women? How was the Broughton family affected by the death of its matriarch?

7. How do the Boughtons view prosperity and charity? What is reflected in th way Glory handles the household finances, with leftover money stored in the piano bench? What is the nature of Jacks interest in Marxism? What is demonstrated in the incident of the book on Englands working classes (the stolen library volume that Robert Broughton considered dull)?

8. How do the themes of deception and integrity play out in the novel? Are all of the characters honest with themselves? Which secrets, in the novel and in life, are justified?

9. What does Jack do with the memory of his out-of-wedlock daughter? Does his father have an accurate understanding of that chapter in Jacks life?

10. How are Glory, Jack, and Robert affected by Teddys visit? What accounts for the "anxiety, and relief, and resentment" Glory feels regarding Teddys arrival (p. 253)?

11. Discuss Amess provocative sermon, which Jack paraphrases as a discussion of "the disgraceful abandonment of children by their fathers" (p. 206) based on the narrative of Hagar and Ishmael. To what degree are parents responsible for the actions of their children, and vice versa?

12. What aspects of romantic love are reflected in Home? How does Glory cope with her ill-fated engagement? Is Jack very different from Glorys fiancé? What do the Boughtons think of John Amess marriage to Lila?

13. How did you react to Dellas arrival? What legacy and memories will define her son? What common ground did Jack and Della share, fostering love?

14. Hymns provide a meaningful background throughout the novel. What do their words and melodies convey?

15. In terms of religion, what beliefs do Glory, Jack and Robert agree upon? What do they seek to know about God and the nature of humanity? What answers do they find?

16. What distinctions did you detect between the way John Ames described Jack in Gilead and the portrayal of Jack in Home? What are the similarities and differences between the Ames and Broughton households? What accounts for the fact that families can inhabit nearly identical milieux but experience life in profoundly different ways?

17. Do towns like Gilead still exist? Are pastors like Ames and Boughton common in contemporary America?

18. Discuss the homecomings that have made a significant impact on your life. How much forgiveness has been necessary across the generations in your family?