Comments (0)

By Bryan, January 4, 2010

Home
By Marilynne Robinson

Home was only the third novel by Marilyn Robinson in thirty years. It was definitely worth the wait. Home chronicles the return of prodigal son Jack Boughton to the family farm in Gilead, Iowa. His aged father Robert, and Glory, Jack’s baby sister, now middle aged, anxiously await Jack’s return after twenty years of non-communication. Glory, a former school teacher, who by chance or unconscious design has slowly crashed back to Gilead to care for her fading father. That father, the Reverend Robert Boughton, spiritual lighthouse to the town of Gilead for much of his life, is now a wisp of his former self. He clings to life in the small hope he will once again meet  his estranged son. The Lord giveth; Jack returns.

Polite but unrepentant of his past transgressions, Jack torments his father by simply being himself, the black sheep of the family, also a drunk, and maybe a coward. Glory accepts Jack wholeheartedly, hardened liver and all, while the Reverend Boughton becomes tortured by his life’s one failure: his anti-social communist sympathizing son.

In case you are thinking you’ve heard this one before, you’ve never heard it by a writer as talented as Marilynne Robinson. In her hands the sleepy Boughton household becomes a boiler engine of psycho-spiritual pressure. The tension between father and son permeates the house like sunlight. Fate, sin, free will, and the capital “eff” Fall, are all weapons in the psychic warfare. Robinson illuminates both the positive and the negative nature of piety with clear effortless prose. If you are afraid this is just a book about a bunch of churchies in need of a little grease, all the characters have secrets and there is a surprise ending. The reader, and author, always know that rural Iowa in the late 50s is a serious bubble, outside of which are horrors that don’t permit the luxury of theological angst.

Literati may recognize the Boughtons and the town the Gilead as it gave the title to Robinson’s previous novel which earned her a Pulitzer Prize. Gilead and Home are companion pieces that take place in the same town at the same time but inside different households. I can’t recommend both novels strongly enough. On a personal note, Home is the last book I will get to read with the 2nd Wednesday Book Club, a reading group I’ve led here at the library for the past two years. To all my book club members, I thank you, and apologize for all the pretentious literary crap I’ve convinced  you to read. Though it is sad to have to move on, I am happy the last book we read together was one as powerful and meaningful to me as Home.

- Bryan

Comments (0)

By Jenny, June 5, 2009

This Is Not a Love Song
by Sarahbeth Purcell, 2006

When I read reality-based fiction, I want the characters to be people with whom I’d like to go to my local coffee shop and share a deep caffeinated conversation. Sarahbeth Purcell’s new novel definitely includes my kind of people!

The stories of Julia and her best friend Delia are revealed through letters, diary entries, telephone conversations, and a few direct encounters. Purcell, being a local girl, has made Nashville the setting. Each chapter begins with a song title. Some are indeed real songs from the 80’s and 90’s, while some are song titles Purcell created to challenge her readers to a little music trivia game. If you’re familiar with the tunes, it clues you into what the characters are feeling.

This is a modern novel that deals with real problems, including depression, drug abuse, sexual abuse, and deadbeat parents. I think you’ll find there is hope for the two best friends to find love, in spite of all the dysfunction around them. Be sure to read Purcell’s first novel Love is the Drug.

- Crystal