Home / Marilynne Robinson 325 pp.

Robinson's Lila is just out and garnering praise; Home is the middle story in the group of novels which begins with Gilead in the Iowa town of the same name.  Robinson's writing in Home is quietly dazzling, as she tells the story of Glory, who's returned to Gilead to care for her dying father, the Reverend Boughton. She is joined by her brother Jack, the family's black sheep and a struggling alcoholic.  This is small-town America in the 1950s and yet in Robinson's writing these conservative Iowans have a worldview and way of speaking which seems almost foreign.  Jack is a prodigal son, but she expands on the biblical story in such a way that it's new and fresh.  And the ending is very close to perfect.