Home - Marilynne Robinson

This is a funny start to a blog post that’s essentially a book review, but I think it’s necessary. Of late, I’ve been quite lazy about typing the things I like to share, and it is something I’m trying to find a solution for. It is really easy to postpone writing about something that completely captures your imagination at a certain point of time. You are on a train, or have friends over or simply need to get the laundry out of the way. And after a while, even a few hours sometimes, the effort to put things on paper or the web seem to turn out as contrived imitations of what could have been a good piece of writing. The distaste of having to share something so inferior to what I originally intended sometimes makes me unwilling to write about it. Well, anyway that’s exactly how I feel about this book review, but I’ll plod along and maybe someone reading this can help me.

Marilynne Robinson has the ability to make it impossible to put her books down, until the very end. And even afterwards, you are filled with a longing to go back, and read some parts over, for it is not suspense that drives the tale. Home is a story about the lives of a brother and sister forced to return to the place they grew up in, for a stay much longer than either wishes for. Their father, Robert Boughton is a retired Presbyterian minister showing signs of rapid aging. The story is based in the town of Gilead, a fictional place that is also the site and name of another book by the author. The events in the two books take place at the same time, and Gilead is narrated by John Ames, a Congregationalist minister who is a friend of Robert Boughton. The narrative in both books is like a certain wine I once tasted – It had a sharp, interesting taste as I sipped, with a surprisingly sudden, short aftertaste that I thought was the finish, until I realized that I had a pleasant mild and lingering sweetness in my taste buds long after that first sip. The things you would like about the books depend to an extent on your own experiences in life, which makes them seem very personal. I lent my copy of ‘Gilead’ to my sister, and have realized how much I miss the book; it has been a long time since I felt that way about anything.