Hope and Glory

Home, by Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson’s magnificent previous novel, Gilead, was structured as a letter by the elderly, ailing Reverend John Ames to his young son. A persistent theme was the fear that Jack Boughton, the black sheep son of his dearest friend, would exercise a malign influence on his wife and boy after his death. Home is a counterpart rather than a sequel: read independently, it would still be astounding.

Narrated in the third person, the novel concerns the home of the widowed Reverend John Boughton, a former Presbyterian minister in Gilead, Iowa. Boughton is looked after by the youngest of his eight children, Glory, in a house that ‘embodied for him the general blessedness of his life, which was manifest, really indisputable’, but for her is also ‘abandoned’ and ‘heart- broken’. She was a teacher until her fiancé of several years ran off after revealing that he was already married. She is ‘a lonely schoolgirl at 38’, at home because ‘she had to be somewhere, like any other human being on earth … It is a blessing to know what is being asked of you.’ Now their prayers are being answered because Jack, her wayward older brother whom they have not heard from for 20 years and was thought might be dead, has written to say that he will be coming home ‘to stay for a while’.

The novel turns on two central questions: whether Jack believes in his father’s God, and whether he will stay. Robinson’s skill and her emotional, psychological and moral sensitivity make the exploration of these questions gripping. For Jack must be ranked among the great creations of literary fiction. He is a misfit who has failed to live up to his father’s principles, despite having internalised many of his values.