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Home>Services>For Book Lovers>Book Clubs>Home by Marilynne Robinson
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| Story | | Hundreds of thousands of readers were enthralled and delighted by the luminous, tender voice of John Ames in Gilead, Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Now comes Home, a deeply affecting novel that takes place in the same period and same Iowa town of Gilead.
This is Jack's story. Jack - prodigal son of the Boughton family, godson and namesake of John Ames, gone twenty years - has come home looking for refuge and to try to make peace with a past littered with trouble and pain. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold down a job, Jack is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Boughton's most beloved child. His sister Glory has also returned to Gilead, fleeing her own mistakes, to care for their dying father. Brilliant, loveable, wayward, Jack forges an intense new bond with Glory and engages painfully with his father and his father's old friend John Ames.
(From Virago Press) Top
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| Author Details | | Marilynne Robinson was born in 1947. Her first novel, Housekeeping (1981) received the PEN / Hemingway award for best first novel and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
(From Virago Press)Top
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| Discussion Points |
| Would it be fair to say that this novel concerns the failure to overcome our lesser natures? What part does grace play in this? | | Do the characters change in this novel? If so what brings about these changes? | | Jack could be described as “the prodigal son”, do you agree with this summation of him? | | Does he find redemption and forgiveness from his father? | | Are the characters well drawn? | | Do you feel sympathy for them? | | How do they develop during the course of this novel? | | What does home mean for Robert and his children? What does the house itself signify to the family? With whom so they feel most at home with? | |
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| Similar Titles |
| The Road Home by Rose Tremain | | On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
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