Home
by Robinson, Marilynne
- Used
- Hardcover
- Condition
- Very Good in Very Good dust jacket
- ISBN 10
- 1554681219
- ISBN 13
- 9781554681211
- Seller
-
Wheatfield, New York, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Harpercollins Publishers. Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. 2008. Hardcover. 1554681219 . A Good Read ships from Toronto and Niagara Falls, NY - customers outside of North America please allow two to three weeks for delivery. Slant to spine, light edgewear. First impression of first Canadian edition. ; 8.40 X 5.70 X 1.10 inches .
Reviews
On Nov 11 2014, CloggieDownunder said:
Home is the second book in the Gilead series by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Marilynne Robinson, and is set in Gilead, Iowa at the same time as the first book. This book focusses on Reverend Robert Boughton (closest friend of Reverend John Ames), and his family. Thirty-eight-year-old Glory Boughton, with a failed engagement behind her, returns to Gilead to look after her ailing father, Robert. A letter arrives, and Glory worries about the effect it will have on her father: “…the note might really be from Jack, but upsetting somehow, written from a ward for the chronically vexatious, the terminally remiss”.
Eventually, her disreputable brother Jack, an unemployed alcoholic, returns home after twenty years of virtual silence. Her father is pleased to see this favoured child again, one who went from “a restless, distant, difficult boy” to what Jack himself admits: “….nothing but trouble…….I create a kind of displacement around myself as I pass through the world, which can fairly be called trouble”. Jack is not the only one with secrets in his past, and he and Glory form a bond. His reconnection with his godfather and namesake, Reverend John Ames does not proceed smoothly.
They think back on their youth in the family home: “Experience had taught them that truth has sharp edges and hard corners, and could be seriously at odds with kindness” and “…lying in that family meant only that the liar would appreciate discretion…..as a matter of courtesy they treated one another’s deceptions like truth, which was a different thing from deceiving, or being deceived”. Glory is less than pleased to be in Gilead and dreads the thought of spending the rest of her days there: “To have [the past] overrun its bounds this way and become present and possibly future, too – they all knew this was a thing to be regretted”
Robinson treats the reader to some marvellous descriptive prose: “Their father said if they could see as God can, in geological time, they would see it leap out of the ground and turn in the sun and spread it arms and bask in the joys of being an oak tree in Iowa”. She touches on the question of racial prejudice and also includes some hints about the life Lila led before Gilead, a subject expanded on in the third book in this series. While this novel is somewhat slow in places, it is a stirring read and the final pages will move many readers to tears.
4.5★s
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Details
- Bookseller
- A Good Read (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 102139
- Title
- Home
- Author
- Robinson, Marilynne
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good in Very Good dust jacket
- ISBN 10
- 1554681219
- ISBN 13
- 9781554681211
- Publisher
- Harpercollins Publishers
- Place of Publication
- Toronto
- Date Published
- 2008
- Keywords
- 1554681219
Terms of Sale
A Good Read
Refunds issued for all items returned within 30 days undamaged. Returns resulting from the item received by the buyer being different from the one described in the Biblio listing will result in a refund of the book value and all related shipping costs upon return of the item. Books returned for any other reason within 30 days will result in a refund of the book value only.
About the Seller
A Good Read
Biblio member since 2008
Wheatfield, New York
About A Good Read
Specializing in signed first editions since 2000.
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