Marilynne Robinson's Home: Making Light of Life

Marilynne Robinson is a genius of exegesis. There’s a rare quality of contemplation in her writing, an intensity of speculation concerning both Biblical and secular phenomena that seems lacking in many contemporary novels and, I dare say, in much religious thinking as well. A gross generalization perhaps, but novels seem to have embraced the model of Flaubert to such an extent that we are comfortable with character and plot spinning their way toward conclusion with nary a backward glance nor pause for reflection. “Show, don’t tell” is the old maxim, and it’s well-suited to create the kind of vivid, immediate, lyrical and astonishing tales we have become accustomed to — the kind of tales we see also in the movies. So it feels like an old-fashioned revelation to find a writer so willing to sit and ponder. A devout Calvinist — of all things — Robinson treats every minor interaction with the world as containing the secrets of God’s design, and regardless of one’s spiritual beliefs, there is a rich pleasure in her odd ethos: Do less, consider it more.

One remarkable thing about Robinson’s previous novel, the Pulitzer Prize–winning Gilead, is that not much happens in it. An old preacher with an ailing heart, John Ames, son and grandson of preachers, writes a letter to his own young son. He tells a few stories about his grandfather, who has lived a much more eventful life than he. With the exception of one trip to his grandfather’s grave, in Kansas, Ames has scarcely left his small Iowa town. His great romance, so to speak, begins when he invites a younger woman to Bible study, and she becomes his wife. His great turmoil is the arrival of Jack Boughton, the prodigal son of his neighbor and a man Ames neither approves of nor forgives. High points in the resulting drama include a postdinner conversation on the topic of predestination, and a sermon Ames gives on Hagar and Ishmael, which offends Jack. What makes Gilead such a beautiful book — a masterpiece, I believe — is not the events it describes but the quality of Ames’ scrutiny of them. In his humble, reverent way, he takes the world he has been given and turns it over and over in his mind, like a hungry man savoring every aspect and flavor of his lone scrap of food. After a beautiful analysis of the nature and pleasures of water, Ames concludes: “I wish I had paid more attention to it.”

For Ames, and for Robinson, the most minuscule things — an ashy biscuit, a splash of water, a detail of scripture — become the subject of profound inspection and the source for ruminative flights of fancy as delicious as any narrative.

As if putting to a test this philosophy of emphasis over breadth, Robinson uses the exact same plot, characters and time frame in Home that she did in Gilead. The only substantial difference is that the action has been moved one house over, to the Boughtons’ residence, where Jack and his sister Glory, also returning from an unsuccessful stint in the wide world, minister to their dying father, an old Presbyterian preacher. The major events and revelations of the two books remain unchanged. The profound twist — not so much of plot as of the heart — at the end of the novels is similar. The argument about predestination is on the porch in Home, as it is in Gilead, and serves as significant a role. The most notable difference between the books is that Gilead is written from a luxuriant first-person perspective, while Home adopts a more constrained third person. One result is that the novel lacks the depth of Gilead’s introspection, which initially seems a shame, because in this art, Robinson is unequaled.

With its more traditional narrative style — chronological, with action and dialogue pushing the plot along — Home is a more cloistered and claustrophobic work than Gilead, and it acts as a kind of dark counterpart, lying in the shadow of Gilead’s delightful brightness. Gilead, though heartbreaking in parts — it is, after all, a novel about a man contemplating his own death — is imbued with a wealth of curiosity, astonishment, humor and grace. Ames, despite his doubts and worries, finds continual splendor in the construction of the world, and, indeed, his home is occupied by a beautiful child and a loving wife. Next door, the situation is less sanguine: Jack Boughton has been, at turns, a drunk and a derelict, forever guilty and incurably suspicious, and incapable of believing in his father’s faith, with the exception of hell: “Perdition is the one thing that always made sense to me.”

Glory has seen a long marriage engagement turn to nothing, and her life seems to have dead-ended back at her now-decrepit childhood home: “What an embarrassment that was,” she thinks, “being somewhere because there was nowhere else for you to be.”