Twenty-four years passed
between Marilynne Robinson's stunning debut Housekeeping and her second novel, Gilead. Now that Home, a sequel to Gilead, has appeared only four
years later, fans of Robinson's still-waters-run-deep prose and achingly
poignant characterizations must feel their cups are overflowing. Robinson's is
no less a treasure for arriving more frequently; her prose remains an
experience to be savored, page by page and often word by word. Yet its appeal
lies in Robinson's ability to capture moments on the way toward the inevitable
decline and end of all things, without harming the fragile, fleeting quality of
the singular instance. She writes about the tipping of the scales between
memory and hope, as her characters close their eyes on the past with only a
thread of faith connecting them to the unknown beyond.
Gilead recorded the theological reminiscences of John Ames, pastor of
the Congregationalist church in Gilead, Iowa, as he struggled with tragedy and
grace both in his own life and in that of his namesake, his best friend's son, Jack
Boughton. In Home,
Robinson most often adopts the perspective of Reverend Boughton's youngest
daughter, Glory, who has returned home in her fading youth to care for her
aging father. When prodigal son Jack returns home after 20 years of
dissipation, the father is overjoyed but anxious, parsing through Presbyterian
precepts the question of whether his extended visit means there's any hope for
his salvation. Meanwhile, Glory works through conflicted feelings of invasion,
indignation, and filial concern in responding to the presence of a brother
whose love she always craved. Gradually, the outlines of his unknown life in
two decades of absence are revealed to the family, and to Ames down the street,
whose forgiveness and forbearance will hardly come easy.
Home's plot would be somewhat
cryptic without Gilead, but in terms of suspense, it might work best alone; information
about Jack that comes as a revelation to Glory is already known to Ames, and
therefore isn't a surprise to attentive readers of both novels. But as with Gilead, the story's action lies
not in what happens—very little, other than front-porch sitting, grace at
meals, and fretful nights waiting for Jack's footstep on the stair—but in
how the characters respond to the crushing weight of their lost opportunities.
With her peculiar keenness, Robinson ponders a mystery: Does God predestine us
to bliss or perdition, and if so, where can the elect be found in this vale of
tears?