Review of Home, by Marilynne Robinson

This book illustrates the dichotomy between the idea of home and its reality. "Home" the idea might evoke feelings of comfort, safety, companionship, desire fulfilled; synonyms such as "refuge," "shelter," and "haven" come to mind. Who wouldn't want to live there?

The book shows that a home might actually be a place of discomfort, disappointed and stifled longing, and misunderstandings; if not a place of outright danger it might house prickly-edged sensibilities that must constantly be circumvented or soothed.

The Boughton home is the latter, as much as the old man and his grown son and daughter long for it to be the former. The distant past -- the lore and furniture of ancestors -- encroaches and cannot be removed. Glory and Jack are clearly not "at home" there.

Page 102: "He lets us wander so we will know what it means to come home. What does it mean to come home?"

Page 282: "What kinder place could there be on earth, and why did it seem to them all like exile? Oh, to be passing anonymously through an impersonal landscape! Oh, not to know every stump and stone, not to remember how the fields of Queen Anne's lace figured in the childish happiness they had offered to their father's hopes, God bless him."

It's not, of course, that the current occupants are bad people or don't try to be a family. Indeed, they work very hard at loving each other, but are constantly thwarted because their own more immediate and unavoidable pasts join the fussy, dark curtains in crowding out the sun.

Experience had taught [her parents] that truth had sharp edges and hard corners, and could be seriously at odds with kindness. They had learned that excessive devotion to even the highest things seemed and probably was sanctimonious, and that the one sufficient measure of excess was that look of annoyance, confirmed in themselves by a twinge of embarrassment, that meant the line had been crossed. They recognized grace in the readiness of the darkest sinner to take a little joke, a few self-effacing words, as an apology. This was something her father in particular, who was morally strenuous but sociable, too, had learned to appreciate cordially. Truly there were perils on every side in the pastoral life, and her father was wary of them all. (page 17)

Kindness, however, was one of the things that irked Glory. She found her black-sheep brother too polite as he tip-toed through the minefield, and her father too quick to forgive (before he had been able to reconcile his tone of voice with the intent of his heart). Rev. Boughton had taken the view that a man's "crime was his punishment."

Maybe great sorrow or guilt is simply to be accepted as absolute, like revelation. My iniquity/punishment is greater than I can bear. In the Hebrew, her father said, that one word had two meanings and we chose one of them, which may make it harder for us to understand why the Lord would have pardoned Cain and protected him, and let him go on with his life, marry, have a son, build a city. (page 101)

The most telling line is on page 247: "Her family was slower to forgive a failure of discretion than they were to forgive most things actually prohibited in Scripture."

The father believed his prodigal was grieved to not belong, lonely in the midst of a large and boisterous family. "How could I be angry at that?" he says to Jack. Taking responsibility, he says, "I should have known how to help you with it."

No, it's not that this is a bad family, a miserable household. It's just very realistically drawn. Robinson patiently includes every gesture and eye-blink to convey how fraught with hazard love/home can be.

Jack cleared his throat. "It's been good to be home. It really has."

The old man raised his eyes and studied his son's face. "You've never had a name for me. Not one you'd call me to my face. Why is that?"

Jack shook his head. "I don't know, myself. They all seemed wrong when I said them. I didn't deserve to speak to you the way the others did."

"Oh!" his father said, and he closed his eyes. "That was what I waited for. That was what I wanted." (page 311)

At first I read into it the idea that what was wanted was the admission, but that seemed cruel, and the father was not cruel. What he wanted was the naming, to be known as "father" by the much-beloved son. He wanted his son to resume his proper place, to request -- even demand -- the fatted calf.

Home is a place we presume to belong, where we are accepted for ourselves.