Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Jul 24, 2011

Schmacko rated it:

This book is simply beautiful and heartbreaking.

I started getting emotional, tears started welling up on page 26, when I read this about a sister awaiting her prodigal brother’ homecoming after twenty years of his absence:

…Glory had her own hopes, which were also too high – that this visit would happen at all, that it would be interesting, and that Jack would not remember her as the least tolerable, the most officious, the least to be trusted of all his brothers and sisters.

More...

7 comments like (10 people liked it)

Oct 17, 2010

Benjamin rated it:

I don't think I have ever read a novel that so accurately describes the thoughts and actions and motivations of human beings. There was not one false note in this entire book. People acted in this book how they actually do in real life (at least in my experience). Their feelings of love and anger and self-hate were so acute, I often found myself relating to each character more than once.

Maybe some of this comes from where I am emotionally right now—somewhere teetering between hope a More...

4 comments like (15 people liked it)

May 10, 2011

K.D. rated it:

Whoa, now this is the tearjerker! Last week, I read Roxana Robinson's Cost and mentioned in my review that although it was a heavy melodrama, it would not make you cry. Since that and this book, Marilynne Robinson's Home are both included in the 1001 list and the two lady authors share the same surname (Robinson - although no relation), I read them with only a book in between.

This is about relationships all anchored in a place we call HOME. Yes, the novel is aptly titled (unlike in C More...

3 comments like (7 people liked it)

Mar 18, 2011

Barbara rated it:

I am about half way into this book. I received numerous recommendations from my GR Friends, which usually leads me to pleasurable reading. Most of the beginning felt as if I were slogging through a deep morass. I found it tedious. I continued because I expected something would come to life, perhaps on the next page? Or the next? Finally, on page 151 there were definite glimmers! I'll save further criticisms for my review.

Stangely, considering the title subject, I kept reverting to More...

58 comments like (5 people liked it)

May 30, 2011

Laurel rated it:

I thoroughly enjoyed Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and was looking forward to reading her follow-up, which contains many of the same beloved characters. However, it occurred to me while reading this (or listening to it) that Gilead really stands best on its own. While I found this to be a decent enough read, it was slow going, and without all that much reward in the end. It also did not contain the quiet resplendence or thoughtfulness that made Gilead such a delight to read. With Gilead, I often More...

2 comments like (5 people liked it)

Nov 11, 2008

Bronson rated it:

I'm having a tough time with this one. Gilead is one of my absolute favorites and I was so excited about this novel coming out. I think most of my problem is with the reader of the audio book. Her voice for Boughton sounds like a caricature of an old person making fun of an old person. Its really bad like a poor imitation of Katharine Hepburn in On Golden Pond, and totally distracts from the writing. I’d stop listening and read it but I’m afraid the damage is done and I won’t be able to read More...

4 comments like (6 people liked it)

Oct 17, 2010

Peter rated it:

If I hadn't read Gilead, I wouldn't have expected to find a novel about the possibility of spiritual redemption in small-town early 60s Iowa, in which practically nothing happens, as compelling as any thriller. I suppose I can understand why some readers found it boring, but I didn't, at any point. It's both incredibly humane and generous toward its characters, and at the same time ruthless in exposing the limitations they face as they live out what they believe they know are their allotted ro More...

4 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 04, 2009

Charlie rated it:

I spent almost the entire book in a state of mild disappointment: the writing doesn't have the same rarefied beauty as that of Housekeeping or Gilead, and, for what felt like a long time, I found myself unastounded. As I read, I continued to hope that something would shift, that some word or paragraph would throw the entire piece into the sort of relief that would explain why the rest of the book was underwhelming. In general, if that hope surfaces, it's bound to remain unrealized. Not so, here. More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Nov 21, 2008

Shep rated it:

I was not disappointed by Marilynne Robinson's third book. When one reads good literature, for instance, Cormac McCarthy, one is often struck by a turn of phrase or a passage. "How aptly and poetically written," one thinks. This happens rarely with Robinson, because her prose lead us perfectly into the characters' lives. So it is only in hindsight that one identifies her prose as beautiful, and this only because one thinks of the story itself as true in the sense that truth causes More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Oct 17, 2010

Philip rated it:

A companion book to the luminous Gilead, telling much the same story from the point of view of a different character. In both books we see people struggle with coming to terms with long-standing family tensions, especially between fathers and sons, but here also between adult sister and brother. I read Home for my in-person book group (Directed Reading), where I can always count on spirited and informed discussion.

I mostly prefer the first-person, ruminative approach of Gilead, w More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Sep 27, 2008

Matt rated it:

Maybe I'm missing something, or I'm too young, or maybe nothing can live up to the expectations I had for this after Housekeeping and Gilead, or maybe I read it too fast, but I seriously found this book incredibly boring. I liked the beginning and the end, and the book does a good job of building the relationship between estranged brother and sister slowly, almost imperceptibly, over time, which felt very true. But mostly reading this book felt like watching a play in which all the characters More...

1 comment like (10 people liked it)

Nov 15, 2008

Barner rated it:

Having listened to GILEAD on books on tape, I was somewhat prepared for HOME It is an unusual book, the sentences have a wonderful rhythm and cadence, and the characters are so real and often so very sad. (I want to shake Jack and his father and Ames and even the narrator much of the time.) Basically the book is about loss: the prodigal son is welcomed home here, but he does not and cannot fit the groove made for him.

The author accomplishes much: the discussions of religion are More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 17, 2010

Alethea rated it:

A tale of redemption, of homecoming, and the trials of the spirit, Home is moving and lyrical. It makes me want to go back and read all the sad, calm books I was assigned in sophomore English (Saroyan, Agee, Tarkington) that I think now I was too young to understand and enjoy.

This is definitely a re-read. I would not be at all surprised if this ended up on American Lit reading lists of the future.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 17, 2009

Kirstin rated it:

Ok, so my top 10 list is sort of a fluid 12-15 now but this book has to take it's place next to it's companion, "Gilead" as one of my favorites of all time. I finished it today and, perhaps it moved me more than it normally would given recent events, but I really think it's just that good. This is the companion of "Gilead" and chronicles the same events of one summer in a small Iowan town in the early 60's. The books follow the waning days of two ministers and life-long fr More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 25, 2008

Holly rated it:

If I really disliked a book I would not read it, but I was tempted to quit reading this book MANY times. But I read on, thinking it would get more interesting. Sadly, it never did. But if you are super bored go for it!

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Sep 14, 2009

Alina rated it:

I wonder what do people, who haven't read Gilead would think of this book. Would such people be able to piece together the story of Jack's fatherly abandonment, and so, then at what point of the book? I wonder if know the background, and the "ending" of the story added or took away from my reading experience. However, it has been a wonderful experience to go back and forth between the books, comparing recorded conversations and the apparent attitudes between the books. Overall, I like More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 17, 2010

McNeil rated it:

I loved this book, but the Goodreads Star rating goes from "really liked it" (four stars) to "It was amazing" (five stars). And I simply loved it. I would probably say the last 100 or so pages (50?) were AMAZING, but it was actually slow until then. And it was a pretty long book. I loved Jack and Glory and I thought that their characters and their plights were lovingly, achingly portrayed. And realistically. It was a True book, even though it was fiction, and that holds my de More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 17, 2010

Charles rated it:

Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.
--Robert Frost, “The Death of the Hired Man”

Everything that Frost packed into that wry aphorism – need, obligation, exploitation, resistance, resentment – Marilynne Robinson unpacks in her magisterial, breath-stealing new novel, “Home.” Everything and more, for Robinson also ventures into such difficult topics as love and faith.

These are difficult topics for fiction not only beca More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Oct 17, 2010

Dad rated it:

After reading Gilead, I was told (after I moderated our church’s book study group on Gilead) that I should certainly read Robinson’s follow-up novel detailing the same story from a different character’s perspective. In fact, Home is not exactly the same story: nothing can replicate the stateliness and grace of the Rev. John Ames, who narrates Gilead. Instead, this novel is told by Glory, who is Rev. Ames’ favorite neighbor’s daughter. The book centers mostly around Jack Broughton, her brother, w More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 17, 2010

Marian rated it:

After I finished Gilead, I was anxious to read Narilynne's Robinson's follow-up book to it "Home", as it continued the stories of some of the people we met in Gilead.

Home was, perhaps, even better than Gilead. There was more action between the characters - more action in general. As I read, I thought of Roberet Frost's poem "The Deathof the Hired Man" "Home, is, where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." And so they do, Jack's fathe More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 17, 2010

Maggie rated it:

I need to re-read Gilead. I want to keep reading and reading Marilynne Robinson's words and phrases and pages; I want her to author all the books I read, the news, emails, blogs, tweets, whatever - anything that has to be written, she should write.

She has such a simple, straightforward way of phrasing an insight, that you don't even realize it's insightful until a few pages later. She makes me a little less disbelieving, faithless, cynical. She captures suffering and compassion so ea More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 17, 2010

Rebekah rated it:

I had no idea what to expect from this book when I bought it on an impulse. It starts slow, but quickly enmeshes you in a nuanced and smart meditation on religious hypocrisy and religious practice in general, personal prejudice, what it means to be part of any family, and self-identification (among others). The action centers on a dysfunctional family that feigns functionality. The characters' actions and the primary storyline are punctuated occasionally at first, and persistently and refusing t More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 17, 2010

Dagny rated it:

Having read Gilead I had to read Home. The former is fresh in my mind; what pleasure to read these astoundingly beautiful books back to back. Home is about the same few people and events during the same time period as Gilead. In Home the anchoring perspective is given to the youngest sister of the brother who causes such emotional upheaval in the family's closest friend, the narrator of Gilead. (The sister herself has returned home after a failed relationship. As she tends to her dying father, More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 17, 2010

Tanya rated it:

Yay! I found it on the "new books" shelf at the library on Saturday. I'm so excited!

I just read "Home" by Marilynne Robinson, and I stick by everything I've ever said about her. SHe is AMAZING. Home is a "parallel text" to her pulitzer prize winning novel Gilead, in which the same events are recounted from another character's point of view. I know as a title it's aleady taken, but as a description of this work the phrase "a heartbreaking work of sta More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 16, 2009

Kayla rated it:

As the companion novel to the gorgeous "Gilead", one of the few books to which I have given five stars on this site, I eagerly awaited the release of "Home". It did not disappoint; however, it was not "Gilead". It lacked its warmth and its intimacy and, frankly, granted a harsher picture of the gentle Reverend Ames than I cared for.
To briefly summarize, "Home" follows roughly the same sequence of events as "Gilead" but from the perspective More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 21, 2008

Chris rated it:

4.5 actually. The simple, sometimes beautiful, sometimes anxious prose creates an atmosphere that brings this story to wonderful life. For a story set in the 1960s, which deals with some archetypal themes of that decade, there is refreshingly no ideological axe grinding. Rather than preaching a political, cultural, or religious sermon, Robinson focuses our attention on insignificant figures from an insignificant town and their very particular, "rueful" summer at home.

Reade More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Mar 11, 2009

CK rated it:

I love this book. I had a good, long weep after finishing it. But that's not why I love it. I've been sitting here trying to analyze exactly why I love it so much but words are failing me — and you know that never happens. So here goes. Her other books are also wonderful, but this one makes me sure that Marilynne Robinson is one of the greatest writers alive today. That it is original is an understatement. I could talk about how I think she's establishing a new literary genre, but the truth is, More...

3 comments like (11 people liked it)

Nov 08, 2008

Maya rated it:

Well after talking to Shayla about Gilead, I decided to give Home another try although from the first pages I found myself getting a little bored with all the talk about how wonderful Jack was.

However, in the end I really liked it. Not as much as Gilead, but still a lot, and I wished I could have read the books in conjunction with one another as it was fascinating to get Jack and Glory's take on their whole situation. I really liked how even though the whole book was explicitly abo More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 17, 2009

Julie rated it:

This was the first book of Marilynne Robninson's that I've read so I wasn't sure what to expect. At one point I thought of the Movie "Amadeus" when the king tells Mozart that one of his compositions has too many notes and Mozart looks at him with incredulity and says, "which notes should I remove??" I thought the book was alternatingly "too wordy" and heavy with page after page of beautifully written prose. It was a small book but a slow, deliberate read. Many revie More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 19, 2009

Kathy rated it:

I loved Gilead, the predecessor to this book, and looked forward to meeting the same characters in Home. What a disappointment. I gave up about halfway through this book. I was on page 150 an NOTHING HAD HAPPENED YET. I understand that this is a literary novel, and the point is style and character more so than action, but the characters were elusive and hard to know, too. I think Robinson did that on purpose, to demonstrate how closed they were with each other. I suspect that the reader wa More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

reviews