Marilynne Robinson's Home

I was hoping to like Marilynne Robinson's book Home as much as I liked Gilead. Gilead is unforgivingly sentimental and not at all cynical. Every sentence is perfectly crafted. Not a single word is dispensasbile. This beauty and purposefulness is particularly graceful as it is the memoir of dying Rev. John Ames for his young son.

Home follows the story of Ames' friend Rev. Robert Boughton; Ames' namesake, Jack Boughton; and his sister Glory Boughton.

Jack has returned home after twenty years. His youth was fraught with petty theft, alcohol, and miscellaneous mischief and he has no doubt followed that road to its natural extension.

Ames seems to brim with goodness, thoughtfulness, grace. The goal is of his missive would certainly communicate these sentiments. Jack is equally sympathetic, its the peripheral characters I have a harder time understanding. He is perpetually trying to spare people from his life, rarely passing up an opportunity to be kind, and is ultimately crushed by the guilt of his past and compelled to drink. But no one, not even his sister Glory who has set her goal on knowing and loving her brother, helps him forgive himself. Forgiveness is such an important theme that it seems unnatural to have such an omission. Poor Jack is so busy getting forgiveness from everyone else, seeing himself from everyone else's eyes, that he is incapable of expecting anything but the worst from himself and therefore living in perdition.

What most naturally appeals to me about Robinson is her ability to seamlessly interject important pieces of philosophy and theology into her text. I was compelled to look up the proper definition of "perdition." Home poses a Calvinistic question regarding the existence of predestination. Jack has never been successful at much of anything. His idea of of himself combines fate and personal accountability, creating a life of hopeful, lofty expectations and, consequentially, failure. Jack constantly questions whether it was his fate to live among the dregs of society. Unfortunately, Jack's guilt is so blinding that he undoubtedly believes it is fate, only Glory will discover the truth of Jack's life and its ultimate goodness. Like so much of life, additional feedback is required to take better stock of our lives. Hopefully,by the grace of Christ, the goodness of the event will find him metaphysically, karmically.

There is a goodness that radiates from these books. A sense of love and peace that leaps from the page. In Gilead much of that was because of the century of family history and back story. It is much easier to achieve sympathy when the whole story is conveyed. Who knows why this grace was granted to a character who has lived a more or less "good" life rather than a "bad" one.