| Home: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Marilynne Robinson
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $13.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  41 reviews
Sales Rank: 360
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.3
ISBN: 0374299102
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780374299101
ASIN: 0374299102
Publication Date: September 2, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New!!! bce
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, September 2008: "What does it mean to come home?" In one way or another, every character in Home is searching for that answer. Glory Boughton, now 38 and lovelorn, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Her wayward brother Jack also finds his way back, though his is an uneasy homecoming, reverberating with the scandal that drove him away twenty years earlier. Glory and Jack unravel their stories slowly, speaking to each other more in movements than in words--a careful glance here, a chair pulled out from the table there--against a domestic backdrop so richly imagined you may be fooled into believing their house is your own. Meanwhile, their father, whose ebullient love for his children is a welcome counterpoint to Glory and Jack's conflicted emotions, experiences his own kind of reckoning as he yearns to understand his troubled son. There is a simplicity to this story that belies the complexity of its characters--they are bound together by a profound capacity for love and by an equally powerful sense of private conviction that tries the ties that bind, but never breaks them. It's a delicate sort of tension that you think would resist exposition--and in fact these characters seem to want nothing more than, as Glory says, to treat "one another's deceptions like truth"--but Marilynne Robinson's fine, tender prose imbues this family's secrets with an overwhelming grace. --Anne Bartholomew
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| Customer Reviews: Read 36 more reviews...
 Captured anguish November 23, 2008
Marilynne Robinson has masterfully captured the anguish parents feel when a child fails to get his life together. They know they did not raise the child for this to happen. The fact that their other children turn out just fine does not ease the pain. To me, this is a very emotional book. I cried right along with old man Boughton. I like Gilead, but I love Home.
Jean Rhoads
 Tedious November 15, 2008
Normally I enjoy literary novels and good writing. I don't require a lot of action, flashy settings, glamourous characters, or what have you.
I was disappointed to find Home simply tedious. Very little action, repetitive dialogue, nothing to enjoy in any of the characters, nothing even to look forward to for their futures (either for them or for us.)
If you enjoy reading about theological debates circa 1950, thinly veiled Bible-based racism, figurative hair-shirt-wearing, uncontrolled weeping, and crotchety but not feisty old men, by all means pick up Home.
I found it to be the literary equivalent of a big spoonful of cod liver oil: probably not without hidden healthful qualities, but requiring a good deal of determination to choke it down.
Beautiful, touching, perfect November 15, 2008
Maybe not perfect, because it did come to an end. This is truly one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. I read Gilead after Home, and found it equally as beautiful. It is a story set in a simpler time, when things like good behavior and honor mattered more. The things that set Jack so far apart from his family would not seem like such a big deal now.The relationship of Jack and Glory is skilfully written, and it is easy to feel her pain and hope. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
A bit too sloww, still worth reading... November 4, 2008
I was excited to see that this book had been released since I loved GILEAD so much. While I enjoyed HOME, I probably did not like it as much as it's predecessor.
Both books are very similar in tone and content (not surprising since they are parallel pieces to each other), but I found HOME to move at a much more slower pace then GILEAD and that's saying something considering how slowly placed GILEAD is. It took me several days to complete this book. That's not to say it's boring. It's not. It's just that I think there is a bit too much repetitiveness.
Still, I recommend HOME to anyone who loved GILEAD. Both books compliment each other very well. They are not plot driven stories, but beautifully written books about people.
 Poor narrator November 3, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This review refers to the audiobook.
It's a shame. The narrator sounds like she's narrating an episode of Dynasty. Breathy and melodramatic. Like a congested divorcee waving around a glass of wine while she talks about her teenage glory days in the Hamptons.
In other words, definitely not suited to this material.
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