Teaser: Review of Home by Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson has been a favorite author of mine for the last few years. She has been around for a while, but has only written three works of fiction. She mostly writes nonfiction and prose. Thanks to an old college roommate who took me to a reading one night at UVU, I became hooked. She taught me new words like insouciant, and gave me plenty of food for thought, especially in terms of Christianity.

I finally purchased her new book Home a few weeks ago, and had the pleasure of reading most of it this past weekend when I went to LA for a family friend's wedding. I read a few pages when I remembered a dear friend's advice: never read without pen in hand. Sadly, I'm only halfway done and I'm not sure when I'll finally finish it, but it's so good I knew I needed to get started on my blog review quickly.


Home is a sequel of sorts to Robinson's Pulitzer Prize winning novel Gilead. It tells the story of a minor character in Gilead in much greater detail. Jack is a prodigal son, returned after 20 years. His story is told in tandem with the story of the development of a relationship with a younger sister Glory. Unveiling his purpose for returning is a slow process for Robinson, but that isn't a bad thing. It gives her the time to explain some wonderful things about life, the sinner, and returning from the point of seemingly no return. Some of my favorite excerpts:

"There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error, so Papa used to say. You must forgive in order to understand. Until you forgive, you defend yourself against the possibility of understanding...If you forgive, he would say, you may indeed still not understand, but you will be ready to understand, and that is the posture of grace."

"He prayed before the commencement of prayer. May the meditations of our hearts be acceptable. It seemed to her that her own prayers never attained to that level of seriousness. They had been desperate from time to time, which was a different thing altogether. Her father told his children to pray for patience, for courage, for kindness, for charity, for trust, for gratitude. Those prayers will be answered, he said. Others may not be. The Lord knows your needs."

"'Say you do something terrible. And it's done. And you can't change it. Then how do you live the rest of your life? What do you say about it?'

...'repent, and then--you can put it aside, more or less, and go on.'"

And finally,

"Yes, there it was, the parable of manna. All bread is the bread of heaven, her father used to say. It expresses the will of God to sustain us in this flesh, in this life. Weary or bitter or bewildered as we may be, God is faithful. He lets us wander so we will know what it means to come home."

I so look forward to finishing it! Stay tuned!