Τζακ

Gilead #4

by Marilynne Robinson, Κατερίνα Σχινά (Translator)

Ο μυθικός κόσμος του Γκίλιαντ –εκεί που διαδραματίζονται τα μυθιστορήματα της Ρόμπινσον, Γκίλιαντ, Στο σπίτι, Λάιλα και τώρα το Τζακ– και οι αγαπημένοι του χαρακτήρες έχουν ρίξει φως και έχουν αναλύσει σε βάθος τις πολυπλοκότητες της Αμερικάνικης Ιστορίας, τη δύναμη των συναισθημάτων μας και τα θαύματα ενός ιερού κόσμου.

Στο «Τζακ» η συγγραφέας ξεδιπλώνει την ιστορία του Τζον Έιμς Μπάουτον, του άσωτου υιού του πρεσβυτεριανού ιερέα του Γκίλιαντ και το ειδύλλιό του με την Ντέλα Μάιλς, μια καθηγήτρια γυμνασίου και κόρη επίσης ιεροκήρυκα. Ο βαθύς, βασανισμένος και καταδικασμένος διαφυλετικός έρωτάς τους αντηχεί όλα τα παράδοξα του αμερικάνικου τρόπου ζωής, τότε και τώρα.

Εκθαμβωτικό και διορατικό, το τέταρτο μυθιστόρημα της σειράς «Γκίλιαντ» προσπαθεί να απαντήσει στο ερώτημα εάν ο άσωτος υιός ενός ιερέα μπορεί να βρει την εξιλέωση μέσα από την αγάπη. Μια συγγραφέας επιβλητικής σοφίας και δεξιοτεχνίας.
Guardian

Η Marilynne Robinson είναι μια από τις σπουδαιότερες συγγραφείς της εποχής μας. Το 2008 έκλεινα έτσι το άρθρο μου: «Δεν ισχυρίζομαι ότι είσαι όντως νεκρός αν δεν έχεις διαβάσει Marilynne Robinson, αλλά ειλικρινά δεν θα μπορούσα να ισχυριστώ ότι είσαι και εντελώς ζωντανός». Δεν έχω αλλάξει γνώμη.
Sunday Times

Το τέταρτο και ίσως το καλύτερο μυθιστόρημα της λαμπρής, βαθυστόχαστης σειράς «Γκίλιαντ»· μια θλιβερή ιστορία για την αγάπη, τη φυλή και τα ήθη των κεντροδυτικών πολιτειών.
Observer

Μια καλογραμμένη απόδειξη της άποψης ότι η αγάπη νικάει τα πάντα – ποτέ όμως χωρίς πόνο.
Kirkus

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature, Romance, Race

432 pages, Paperback

First published September 29, 2020

About the author

American novelist and essayist. Across her writing career, Robinson has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, National Humanities Medal in 2012, and the 2016 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. In 2016, Robinson was named in Time magazine's list of 100 most influential people. Robinson began teaching at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1991 and retired in the spring of 2016.

Robinson is best known for her novels Housekeeping (1980) and Gilead (2004). Her novels are noted for their thematic depiction of both rural life and faith. The subjects of her essays have spanned numerous topics, including the relationship between religion and science, US history, nuclear pollution, John Calvin, and contemporary American politics.

Reviews

[Angela M · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most beautiful love stories I’ve read in a very long time.

“After years of days that were suffered and forgotten, no more memorable than any particular stone in his shoe, here, in a cemetery, in the middle of the night, he was caught off guard by the actual turn of events, something that mattered, a meeting that would empty his best thoughts of their pleasure . “

Jack Boughton, son of a minister, gone from his home in Gilead, Iowa, now in St. Louis, recently out of prison, for a crime he did not commit. It’s a third person narrative, but Robinson takes us deep into Jack’s conscience, his thoughts on his low self worth, his failings, the mistakes of his youth that leave scars, the crimes he did commit, his drinking. Then he meets Della, a black woman, a teacher, herself the daughter of a minister. I wondered as I was reading if I would have been as captivated with Jack if I hadn’t read the other books in the Gilead series, already at this reading knowing Jack’s past and knowing where this journey will take him. I can’t say for sure, but I can say that I was pulled in - head and heart. I can’t say that I would recommend this as a stand-alone. I think to appreciate the fullness and beauty of the story, it makes sense to know the stories of the Gilead series.

The dark moments of his inner struggles are offset by so much joy - the joy they find in just being together. It would be illegal for Jack and Della to marry in this time and place, yet they married, not a marriage before a minister or a justice of the peace. It was a true marriage before each other, the meaningful joining that is the only one that mattered to them. I loved their conversations as their love grew. By the very nature of who they are, children of ministers, they talk about God, about the hereafter, reflections on faith. I loved their love of and sharing of books, Frost and Shakespeare. I loved even their banter.

It’s beautifully written, as I expected, albeit a little slow in parts, thus 4.5 stars. I have to round up, though. For me it wasn’t only a love story, but so much more. It’s a story reflecting the racism of the 1950’s, sadly holding relevance today. It’s a story of regrets and redemption and the ability to accept and enjoy a little “grace” in your life along side the heartbreak. Robinson is on my list of favorite writers.


I read this with Diane and Esil as one of our ongoing monthly reads.

I received a copy of this book Farrar, Strauss and Giroux through Edelweiss.

[Dolors · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading “Jack” has been both pleasure and pain for this reader.
To begin with, the novel has made me realize that I wasn’t truly prepared to immerse myself into such an intense journey as the Gilead trilogy when I tackled it a couple of years ago.
I certainly liked the gracious writing back then, the dense, almost oppressive rhythm of the narration and the theological pondering that pulsated underneath the breath of each character, but I failed to grasp the vast understanding this writer possesses over the human psyche and the intricate workings of a very capable but somehow damaged mind.

Jack lives in self-imposed exile in St Louis and fights the memories that haunt him with the bottle. As the prodigal son with a past that taints the perfect harmony of his family, he can’t overcome the guilt caused by the consequences of his reckless actions and finds his only solace in punishing himself for matters that can’t be changed.
When a young woman of color crosses paths with him, a colossal inner struggle begins that will push Jack to the limit and for the first time in his life he will have to choose between the comfortable position of self-denial or the imposing alternative of trying to become a better person in order to deserve the love of an innocent woman.

I can’t help but admire the versatility of Robinson’s character portrayal. It’s hard to believe that the same writer who entered the mind of an old minister could also create such a conflicted, confused and flawed man. Jack’s tortured inner monologue and the biased recollections of his past reminded me of Lila, my favorite character in the Gilead trilogy. There is no hope in Jack’s voice though, he speaks like a man who has wasted all his opportunities and who endures each day as his last. The picture he presents of himself is not only condemnatory but also honest till the point of sounding offensive, and he suffocates any good thought or expectation that might fleetingly enter the reader’s mind.
But still….still… Jack grows on you. He pulls you in stealthily and, with delicate fatalism, he wins your heart in spite of the cautionary warning echoing in your mind. The potential grief of an improbable love story is overshadowed by the glowing clarity of Jack’s thoughts, which are cerebral but also full of unsentimental sensibility.

Robinson’s greatest achievement consists in infusing grace where there is only shame, hope where there is only certain failure, love where there is only resentment; that’s why I won’t ever tire of reading writers like her, writers who make one's heart bloom, even if there is no sunshine, even if there won't ever be a light at the end of the tunnel.

"I was given an ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange of an honest review."

[Debbie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, this was a bust.

I tried, I really did, but it was off with its head at the halfway mark. It had all the good stuff—it’s well written and an excellent character study, with plenty of psychological insight. No waxing poetic about tree stumps and caterpillars, yay! And the main character is self-effacing, always a draw for me. The only interesting part is that it’s a love story between a white man (bum) and a black woman (teacher), and this takes place in the Midwest in the 1950s, where prejudice thrives. This adds a miniscule amount of tension, and I felt sad that they had to hide their affection. But none of that worked because this book was BOR—ING! I have no desire to pull out these good parts and stick them in an in-your-face Joy Jar. I'll show them (LOL)! They deserve only a short paragraph, not a long list. It’s straight to the gripes.

Complaint Board

-The story begins with an interminably long conversation between the man and woman in a cemetery. Will we ever get out? We’re stuck there the whole night because the gates are locked. This scene takes up a quarter of the book. Way too long! I was claustrophobic and was worried that the whole story would be in the graveyard.

-We started off on the wrong foot because the graveyard chat included discussions of faith, God, and philosophy. Both characters had preacher dads, so that explains it. I always run for the hills when there’s church talk, and philosophical chats often remind me of pretentious and boring college lectures. My eyes were glazing over.

-The guy puts himself down constantly and is a criminal and a cad. I mean he never stops! He is so disgusted with himself, I couldn’t help but join in. Usually I love it that a character knows his faults; here it’s overkill.

-I can’t for the life of me figure out what the woman sees in him. I believe him when he says he’s awful. Why doesn’t she? Half the time he’s dirty and disheveled, sometimes sleeping off booze on a park bench.

-We never get to see any of it through the woman’s eyes, so it’s so one-sided. I wanted to hear her take.

-Introspection to the nth degree, which I usually love but I didn’t here. Let me out of his head, please! My old head just kept finding other things to think about, and I had no control over its wanderings. Don’t I need to unload the dishwasher? And off I’d go, leaving the book all alone on the table, rejected.

I was all squirmy wormy about DNFing this. Some uptight, upright voice kept telling me I had to finish the book, that I was a failure if I gave up on it. But it was torture, pure torture, every single time I picked the book up, and I noticed I avoided reading even though I was seriously due for a book fix. I don’t know why I do this to myself! A reasonable and gentle voice kept telling me I had to ditch it, and finally I listened to her. Life is too short, my To-Be-Read pile too bulgy. Once I finally gave myself permission to abandon the book, ah, ah, ah, such a great relief! My heart, soul, head, and eyes were ready for a new book and I got all smiley again in anticipation.

Check out other reviews; most people liked this one.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it....
.....I loved the pure beauty of the gracefully written words....the feelings they stimulated in me.
Each sentence seemed to be fierce and affecting.
Spiritual, morally and emotionally complex ‘novels’ are exceptionally rare....
Marilynne Robinson is ‘exceptionally’ rare....
Her entire body-of-work is quietly powerful.

Reading, *Jack* [an affecting novel during the 1950’s], came at a perfect time...absolutely perfect! With all the racial upheaval happening in 2020...
and many American’s taking time to read - study - and re-educate themselves about American Black history - racial and civil inequality- “Jack” is the ideal ‘fiction’ satisfying tale - with it’s wonderful experiential storytelling ....to compliment the other ‘non-fiction’ books I’ve recently read:
....Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, by Jason Reynolds
....So You Want to Talk about Racism, by Ijeoma Oluo
....White Fragility, by Robin DiAngelo
....The Buddhist on Death Row, by David Sheff
....Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson

Fiction and Non-Fiction Bipartisanship unite!

The story, ( with the memorable characters), language, interracial and religious themes, explored in *Jack*.... lyrical, meditative, and thoughtfully contemplative.....spoke to my heart. I was left feeling that even with all the evil in the world—goodness prevails.

“Jack”....is predominantly Jack’s story... ( told from his point of view), the son of a Presbyterian preacher. Self-acclaimed bum, living in Saint Louis. Jack is white. ( also, a former convict, drunk, and thief)....
yet....I was rooting for him.

Interracial unions were illegal - and loathed upon in the 1950’s....
But....the heart wants what the heart wants ( it’s our minds, judgements, fears, guilt, evaluations, righteousness,.....egos that block the flow of love).

Della is a young beloved daughter, of a Memphis Bishop....a proper Christian woman.

The simplest way to say this: Jack and Della fall in love.
The complexity of their love is less simple.
The story captures splendors and pitfalls of being human.

Sooooo many deeply felt moments ....page after page....
Moments like this:
“An ordinary man would not grieve forever over the sins of his youth, he was fairly sure. And an ordinary man would not dread this great, blind impulse of distruction prophesied at officious length in any newspaper.
Then there was Della. Abstractly considered, a man who could threaten her as Jack did, if he felt no more guilt about it than he could live with then, would be an utter scoundrel. This meant the dark storms of bewilderment would deepen and Jack would have no refuge except, of course, in Della’s sweet calm. He took comfort so quickly at the thought of her that he felt a shudder of calm pass through his body, a thing he had never even heard of. He had to surrender his refuge in order to avoid the most desperate need of it. An hour or two tomorrow evening and then he would tell her goodbye and he would mean it”.
“Try to mean it”.

“I am a Negro, because my God created me to be what I am, and as I am, so I will return to my God, for He knows just why He created me as he did.
Marcus Garvey, of course. Teaching us to respect ourselves. To live up to ourselves. I will say it to my children, and they will say it to their children and their grandchildren. They’ll be Negroes and they’ll live Negro lives. And you won’t have any effect on that at all. Does that bother you?”
“No. A little. I haven’t given it much thought, really. This was probably not true”.

Love love love ....ALL of Marilynne Robinson’s book....and “Jack” was a wonderful sequitar to the Gilead-series.

Thank you Netgalley, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Marilynne Robinson for this wonderful timely-powerful and affecting novel.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. When one opens this book one expects , because after all this is Marilynne Robinson, some pretty fantastic prose. This is what I found, the writing was beautiful. So why then did this not appeal to me as much as Gilead or even Lila? Can I bake it in Covid? Possibly, but this is a very introspective novel, and as such it was, for the most part, one sided. Jack's story and his thoughts, fears about his relationship with Della, rather repetitive as he goes back and forth, again and again. This is the fifties and mixed relationships we not looked in with favor, could be outright dangerous. So definitely a timely book.

I never though got a good sense of Della. Why would she sacrifice so much to be with Jack? He is definitely a man with a past, not a sterling character by any means. This was my problem with the book, why I couldn't rate it higher. It felt too one sided, lacked enough for me to understand their love story. Would it had been different had I read Home, which is the story that includes Jack? Possibly, since this was a read with Angela and Esil and Angela, who did read it, rated it much higher.

A book to sink into for the gorgeous writing, but not one that called to me when I put it down.

ARC from Edelweiss.

[Fionnuala]

Jack is a perfect companion volume to Marilynne Robinson's previous novel, Lila. Both novels focus on a character who lives on the margins, and both trace the growth of a truly beautiful relationship between the marginal figure and a very conventional figure.

Having said that, these two books could also be considered as opposites. The two marginal main characters differ greatly, the most telling difference being their ability to put their thoughts into words. Orphaned Lila grew to adulthood without any formal education, and lived among transient workers who had little need of religion or of any discussion in the abstract; concrete preoccupations such as food and shelter took all their energy. Jack had the opposite experience, steeped from childhood in literature and poetry, and surrounded by a large and very religious family given to discussing ideas and concepts during meals at their well stocked dining table.

While Lila yearns for a life such as Jack was born into, and eventually marries a preacher, Jack is alienated from everything his own family represents, and especially the values of his preacher father. Jack eventually marries someone who is seen as an outcast by his own society although as the daughter of a respected preacher in her own world, his wife has known nothing but uprightness and conventional living, all of which she loses when she meets Jack and becomes an outcast from her own world by association with him.

Despite their many differences, the main characters of the two books have a similar sensitive make-up, suffering torments of self-doubt and fear, but again, they experience this aspect of their personalities in opposite ways. Jack lives on the margins of society because of his fear of causing harm to others while Lila lives on those same margins in constant fear of being harmed, and looks to conventional life for security. But the irony is that it is Jack, though far from harmless, who wears a scar, and it is Lila, though incapable of harm, who carries a knife.

[Guille · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Jack” culmina la tetralogía que Marilynne Robinson empezó con Gilead, y, aunque la autora demuestra una vez más su maestría, su sensibilidad y su profundidad a la hora de retratar personajes y de plantear dilemas morales y vitales, no me ha parecido que esté a la altura de las novelas que la precedieron.

Puedo disculparle que su prosa siempre pausada, elegante y reflexiva se haya aquí espesado un tanto, tratándose del personaje más oscuro y perdido de su elenco, pero algo que estimé como un pecadito venial en sus otras novelas, en “Jack” ha pasado a mayores: la insistente repetición de ciertas actitudes, de ciertos pensamientos, de ciertas ideas que ni el carácter obsesivo de su protagonista puede justificar.

Para quién no haya leído ninguna de las otras novelas (no sería necesario, su seguimiento y comprensión es independiente de las entregas anteriores, aunque, naturalmente, la historia se beneficia de esas lecturas), les cuento que Jack es hijo de un pastor presbiteriano que, crítico con la religión de sus padres y hermanos, poco a poco se fue aislando de todo y de todos, creciendo rebelde y problemático. Esa soledad indeseada le llevó a un profundo descontento consigo mismo, sentimiento que extendió al mundo entero con el que parecía haber contraído una deuda impagable que se iba acrecentando cada vez que, intencionadamente o no, provocaba un daño, algo que él asegura que sucedía con mucha frecuencia.

“El perdón me asusta. Parece una especie de antídoto contra el arrepentimiento, y hay cosas de las que no me he arrepentido lo bastante.”

Su aguda sensibilidad le hace experimentar la mirada ajena como una pesadilla y permanecer atento al más mínimo gesto de rechazo que, contradictoriamente, cree merecer y hasta provocar intencionadamente. De igual forma, soporta pacientemente frecuentes humillaciones y penalidades. Hay momentos en los que parece que es Dickens el autor de una novela sobre un nuevo Jesús que ofrece en todo momento la otra mejilla como si de un justo castigo se tratara. Por todo ello, y buscando una inocuidad que le salvara de su previsible destino, y a pesar de su educación e inteligencia, elige una vida solitaria de vagabundo que, aun siendo un ser profundamente moral, no puede evitar mentir, robar o emborrachase, como si quisiera provocar la ira de ese Dios de sus padres en el que no cree y al que parece reprochar esa inexistencia que solo él parece advertir.

“Un hombre destructivo en un mundo donde todo puede arruinarse o romperse”

Así las cosas, aparece Della Miles, una maestra, hija también de un predicador y que comparte con Jack su amor por la poesía. Della es de raza negra.
“Una vez en la vida, tal vez, miras a un desconocido y ves un alma, una presencia gloriosa fuera de lugar en el mundo. Y si amas a Dios, cada elección te viene dada. Entonces no hay vuelta atrás. Has visto el misterio…, comprendes qué es la vida. Para qué sirve.”

Estamos en St. Louis, en una época en la que la segregación racial es absoluta y los matrimonios mixtos se paga con la cárcel.

“Ese pacto infernal que convertía en transgresión y delito algo que era inocente”

Della es la persona que podría hacerle soportable la vida, pero el simple hecho de que los vieran paseando por la calle podría ser fatal para ella. Así, la novela se parte en dos, ambas con el paisaje de fondo del racismo más radical y miserable. Por un lado, la tierna y conmovedora relación que se establece entre ambos amantes, siempre alertas ante cualquier gesto que pudiera echar por tierra el ya de por sí inestable vínculo que les une.

“Si ahora le tocara la cara, por levemente que fuera, las cosas serían distintas después. Así es el mundo: tocas algo, cambias el mundo. Se necesita cautela.”

Por otro lado, el más extenso y blanco de mi crítica inicial, el que trata sobre el conflicto que se desata en el interior de Jack entre aferrarse a lo que parece ser su único camino de redención o no seguir una relación abocada a causar un daño irreparable a la persona que más quiere. Una problemática sugerente e interesante que, como dije, con escasas variaciones se repite una y otra vez de forma innecesaria.

[Diane Barnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

A beautiful love story between a disreputable white man who in his own words is a bum, and a black woman who is a highly educated high school English teacher. This was St. Louis in the 50's, so even though not the deep south, still an illegal relationship.
Maybe it was me, maybe it's the times we find ourselves in right now, but I could not enjoy it or find value in the story at all. It was told from Jack's point of view, and his head was not a pleasant place to be. Frankly, I found it oppressive. I wish I could rate it higher because I loved her previous three books.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published today 29/09/20

It is odd, what families do to their children—Faith, Hope, Grace, Glory, the names of his good, plain sisters like an ascending scale of spiritual attainment, a veritable anthem, culminating in, as they said sometimes, the least of these, Glory, who fretted at her own childishness, the hand-me-down, tag-along existence of the eighth of eight children. He himself, who aspired to harmlessness, was named for a man who was named for a man remembered, if he was, for antique passions and heroics involving gunfire. He was afraid that Delia or Della might mention a cousin named Dahlia, and he would laugh.

Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead” trilogy (with “Home” and “Lila”) is one of my favourite ever series of books both for their sheer craftmanship of the writing, the maturity and insight of the discussion of the issues covered, and for its sympathetic and intelligent exploration of the depths, consolations and challenges of Christian faith.

It is I think very telling that the collective reviewers of the Guardian (a paper which is somewhere between non-Christian and positively anti-Christian) rated “Gilead” the second best book of the 21st Century.

Therefore imagine my delight when it was announced that the author was writing a fourth book in the series – and one which forms a perfect (and obvious) compliment to the first three volumes – the story of the prodigal son who returns in “Home”, “Jack” (John Ames) Broughton, and whose difficult relationship with his father’s friend John Ames (after whom he is named, and who fears he will usurp his place as husband to Lila and father to his son) forms much of the tension at the end of “Gilead”. That tension is partly dissipated in “Gilead” when Jack confesses to Ames about his black wife (Della) and their child – and the difficulty of their relationship: struggling both against racial miscegenation laws and the avowed disapproval of Della’s family, headed by a minister. Della’s appearance at the end of “Home” forms the ending to that book also.

Robinson herself captured the centrality of Jack to the quartet in a recent Guardian interview about why she chose to write this book: "it seemed to me also that the world of the novels would be stabilised, in a sense, if this absent central figure, whom they all love, were known, given his own life. He characterises the place and the times by what he has to deal with, and the culture of his family by what in it he is, after his fashion, loyal to."

This book is the story of Jack’s meeting with and burgeoning relationship Della – one which closely but not by any means completely follows Jack’s recounting to Ames (which presumably suffers both from the unreliability of memory and the selectiveness of retelling).

The book is written in the third person, but very much from Jack’s point of view.

At the opening of the story he is only just released from prison (wrongly convicted of theft – albeit he could have been correctly convicted for countless other occasions) and living as a down and out, estranged from his family (other than for regular donations from one brother) and struggling with alcoholism, kleptomania and self-destructive tendencies which seem to extend to anything he holds as precious: his only strategy is to aspire to “utter harmlessness” – trying to isolate himself so as to do as little damage as possible.

I’m a gifted thief. I lie fluently, often for no reason. I’m a bad but confirmed drunk. I have no talent for friendship. What talents I do have I make no use of. I am aware instantly and almost obsessively of anything fragile, with the thought that I must and will break it. This has been true of me my whole life. I isolate myself as a way of limiting the harm I can do. And here I am with a wife! Of whom I know more good than you have any hint of, to whom I could do a thousand kinds of harm, never meaning to, or meaning to.”

But into this mix – via a chance encounter, comes the schoolteacher Della and the two are drawn to each other. Jack’s early behaviour forces a breach between them, but both retain feelings for each other and the book opens on a second chance encounter – overnight in a graveyard (where Jack is staying having sold his bed for the night) and Della is inadvertently locked in. This opening conversation is covered almost word for word and covers around the first quarter of the novel and, in perhaps my only criticism, is a little too extended a set piece – I preferred the book when it reverted to perhaps a more conventional pacing.

The book is replete with meditations on poetry, on Hamlet (the subtexts of which form a backdrop to the cemetery conversations), on hymns and on bible verses.

But it is also shot through with the reality of racial tensions in 1950s America: Jack encounters threats and hostility from whites; he struggles with his secret satisfaction at reading of a planned demolition/regentrification of the black area of St Louis as it fits his own tendency to destruction; contrary to Jack’s account in Gilead, Della’s father’s objections to Jack centre less around his atheism and unlike her extended family less around his disreputable character, but instead centres on a firm belief in Negro self-sufficiency and separatism.

But of course like all the series, religious concepts dominate.

Jack struggles with pre-destination; habit, impulse and temptation; penitence, regret and forgiveness; and most of all grace.

Jack said, “He’s forgiven me every day of my life from the day I was born. Breach birth.” He wished he could smoke. Where was all this candor coming from? He said, “Forgiveness scares me. It seems like a kind of antidote to regret, and there are things I haven’t regretted sufficiently. And never will. I know that for a fact.”

… The minister put his glasses on again and smiled as if he were just back from a brief absence. He said, “Mr. Ames, if the Lord thinks you need punishing, you can trust him to see to it. He knows where to find you. If he’s showing you a little grace in the meantime, he probably won’t mind if you enjoy it.”

Jack said, “I’m not sure that’s what’s happening. It’s not always clear to me how to tell grace from, you know, punishment. Granting your terms.” If the thought of someone sweetened your life to the point of making it tolerable, even while you knew that just to be seen walking down the street with her might do her harm, which one was that?

Della remains more of an enigma, and I have seen reviews that query her feelings for Jack, but her motivation – a revelation of her redemptive role, and her opportunity to show non-judgmental kindness to the outcast, and to see and reach the inner soul behind the outward behaviour is revealed in a powerful speech.

“We do. We know this, but just because it’s a habit to believe it, not because it is really visible to us most of the time. But once in a lifetime, maybe, you look at a stranger and you see a soul, a glorious presence out of place in the world. And if you love God, every choice is made for you. There is no turning away. You’ve seen the mystery—you’ve seen what life is about. What it’s for. And a soul has no earthly qualities, no history among the things of this world, no guilt or injury or failure. No more than a flame would have. There is nothing to be said about it except that it is a holy human soul. And it is a miracle when you recognize it.”

A worthy conclusion to a wonderful series. One that I will revisit on its paperback publication with a read through of all four books.

My thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an ARC via NetGalley

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jack is my favorite book of 2021, but it is the fourth in a series, and I'd recommend your reading the other three first, or you won't realize the full impact of what this book really accomplishes. The novel features members of a couple families from Gilead, Iowa, and St Louis, written by Marilynne Robinson, and I have already read and reviewed Gilead, Lila, and Home. Jack is yet another masterpiece by one of the world’s greatest authors. Literary fiction, definitely. It is the tale of an (illegal) interracial relationship that takes place in the forties mostly in St. Louis between older white guy Jack, a self-described bum (though a very well-read one) whose main goal in life has become “harmlessness”” (since he has done so much harm to others in his life, since he was from the first a rebel), and Della, a black high school English teacher, who has never been anything but harmless. Both are "pks" (preacher’s kids), Jack Presbyterian, Della Methodist.

“Their lives were parallel lines that would not meet.”

Jack is the son of Reverend John Boughton of Gilead, Iowa. He is the godson of Reverend John Ames; close friends and good, liberal-leaning preachers, albeit with a somewhat Calvinist leaning (as is the case with Robinson, and that background is also similar to mine, though I am no longer a member of any religious group). The Gilead books are generally set in the 1950s, with some backstories reaching back to the Civil War period, in which Ames's abolitionist grandfather was also a preacher.

Though the books are about many things, one thing it is about is the extent to which “outsiders” are welcome within the community. How do white religious Iowans in the middle of the twentieth century respond to the needs of those who look or act different than they do? What does faith in God and a profession of love for God really mean? These issues are of course continuously relevant with respect to religious folks today. The first book, Gilead, is written in the form of a series of letters by the dying Ames, in his seventies, to his young son, born to a (white) drifter, Lila, who happened to walk into Gilead one day. The third book, Lila, is written from her (outsider) perspective.

The second book, Home, is written with the black sheep/prodigal son Jack in mind. Jack, a kind of troublemaker, left town in the forties to move to St. Louis, and since then lived basically on the streets, with no contact with his family.

“So many things made no sense to him at all, which is one reason he kept to himself all these years.”

It is in St. Louis, though, where (white) he meets and falls in love with (Black) English teacher, Della, though we don’t know that fact in the progression of the books until the end of Home. It is through his relationship with her that he begins to see that: “He might step like Lazarus back into his own life.”

Little of the background about race and racism that emerges as important in the series is known through Home, but it is the central subject of Jack, the fourth novel. How can good Christian small town midwestern white people be other than racists, in the mid-twentieth century? Is it inevitable that they become this way? Surely most of the people in this small Iowa town are "good people" who have learned how to love their brothers and sisters. But usually they can feel good about themselves loving each other because they are all pretty much alike. But Jack loves someone outside the bounds of what/sho is socially acceptable in mid-twentieth-century America.i Jack is a white character who we learn is able to do racial harm in Jim Crow society by falling in love with a black woman.

Jack and Della meet in a (white) cemetery, where he, largely a vagrant, is planning to sleep, but they end up (improbably) locked in together and they end up talking all night and becoming friends. But when she leaves in the morning, he has to hide. If they are suspected of spending the night together, they could be imprisoned for it. It is illegal for white and Blacks to intermarry in the forties in St. Louis which, if Jack continues to pursue this, undermines his intention to do no harm, as Della can lose her job, her family, maybe even become imprisoned, as could Jack.

Jack is sometimes charming, and is gentle, but he's also disreputable, and white; Della is black, and respectable. He is separated from his family, with no job, he’s done jail time. She can possibly “save” him on his road to ruin, but can he “save” her in any sense? When her family finds out about the relationship as it develops, they make it clear that this love can only damn her in their eyes. This is the sweetest but also most anguished of romances, because so much damage can happen if it continues. Yet she is charmed by him, not threatened by him:

“I have never heard of a white man who got so little good out of being a white man.”

As a romance it is chaste, restrained, not steamy at all in any conventional sense-- it’s almost Victorian or Calvinist, essentially, for the most part--and this love that slowly and surely binds them also separates them for so much of the time: It’s too dangerous for them to be seen together! But when he sadly jokes, “I am the Prince of Darkness,” she snaps back, “No, you’re a talkative man with holes in his socks.”

What do they talk about? Theology, poetry, language, meaning. Jack always apologizes to her because he knows he has generally caused harm, even at times to Della as things develop.

Jack tends to despair, considering suicide, but she nudges him in another direction:

“Once you ask if there is meaning, the only answer is yes. You can’t get away from it.”

Of Jack, we learn: “He had a lively fear of regret.” And yet shame and regret and guilt and apology are his essence. “He had made an early start on a wasted life,” he acknowledges, and she sees this, too: “You’re living like someone who has died already.” That Lazarus reference.

And she? “‘I am the mother of sorrows. I am the ender of grief.’”

He sees this, and falls in love with her, for good and/or ill: “You kept me alive already. Just the thought of you.” He walks away and turns to see her: “. . . he saw her stooping gracefully in the faint morning twilight, gathering roses.”

What Jack begins to see through Della is that the very world they live in can be imbued with light and life:

“The air smelled green, of course, so the shading he saw in the darkness might have been suggested by that wistfulness the breeze brought with it, the earth so briefly not earth.” Poetry. Magic. Grace. Love.

Yet Jack goes to Mt. Zion Baptist Church (a Black church), sees the pastor for advice about his situation, and the pastor not surprisingly discourages him. Not now, not in this country, not with this good woman from such a respected preacher's family! Yet Della makes her choice to be with him, and it’s everything he wants and needs.

“. . . she is still impressed with my soul.
Yes, my battered, atheist soul.”

The old hymns come back to Jack’s piano-playing fingers, “ . . . in the way of some moral edification.”

“Just when he thought he knew something about the rest of his life, there she was.”

Della’s family intervenes, as we expect them to, and Jack backs off, respectfully, leaves town, but he later comes back to her and they make decisions with meaning, with consequences, though it’s not clear what will ultimately happen. It is, after all, illegal, so you can’t romanticize this relationship too much. It’s interesting to be living in this country, in these times, during the George Floyd trial, after the summer of 2020, and on and on. To see the roots of today in the policies of the past. And more than interesting, it's of course all too often devastating.

The relationship begins in a cemetery, so this occasions references to (The Tragedy of) Hamlet, and grave-digging, and death, which occur throughout the book. Hamlet--his grief, his frozen inability to act, his being haunted by the ghost of his father, his estrangement from Ophelia, his suicidal tendencies--all resonate here, but in some ways also Romeo and Juliet--the forbidden love across two good but warring families leading to tragedy--seems relevant here, too.

“. . . they were caught in a web that made every choice impossible.”

“. . . grace and guilt met together,” caused by a racist legal system that made it illegal in the mid-twentieth century for blacks and whites to marry.

My review of Gilead:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

My review of Home:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

My review of Lila:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

In case you want a taste of the novel, to consider whether you may want to read it, here’s a short story of Jack and Della that was published in The New Yorker:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...

[William2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

The sadness here will well up now and then and shudder through you.

The novel is all smoldering ember. Anyone would want to write this well.

The setting is post WW2. Jim Crow is everywhere.

I’m grateful to the book because (a) it’s a great story and (b) for the pre-Loving vs. Virginia picture of the US it provides.

For us today, the idea of miscegenation, in our time of mixed-race couples, is unthinkable.

Imagine you are living with someone of a different race and the police arrest and jail you.

There is white Jack’s miserable solitariness, self-medication through drink, love of words. Middle-aged and full of regret for a misspent youth as thief and heartbreaker.

“He resigned himself, not for the first time, to the fact that . . . his life was an intricate tangle of futility….” (p. 137)

And then beautiful Della! A black schoolteacher living nearby who comes to love him.

Both avid readers of poetry. Both children of preachers, hers Methodist, his Presbyterian.

Della’s aunt comes 800 miles from Memphis to — politely — tell him to stay away.

Intense politeness: half their talk is about feared failures of deference to the other.

He likes a bench near the river. He’s sworn her off, yet amazingly she appears.

We don’t get a sense of Della’s deeper character until p. 200, when she visits his room.

“We all have souls, true? . . . But once in a lifetime, maybe, you look at a stranger and you see a soul, a glorious presence out of place in the world. And if you love God, every choice is made for you. There is no turning away. You've seen the mystery—you've seen what life is about. What it's for. . . There is nothing to be said about it except that it is a holy human soul. And it is a miracle when you recognize it." (p. 208)

By this time, she’s in love and recalcitrant. All but breaking with her family.

The end, at Della’s Memphis home, where Jack meets the family, is astonishing.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

I truly adored this latest volume in Robinson's Gilead series. The characters of Jack and Della are endearing and the writing, as always, is splendid. What a masterpiece: it is probably my favorite of the four books so far. I would even say that I wouldn't see a problem giving her a second Pulitzer for this wonderful love story.

I loved the rich dialogs between Jack and Della.
She said, "Something happened that made you decide you'd had all the life you could stand. So you ended it there. Except you have to stay alive, for your father." Her voice came very close to that annoying lilt of realization you hear when people go spiraling off into some supposed insight. They become inaccessible to common sense, to distraction, even. She said, "You don't feel like part of the world anymore. Maybe you're more like most people than you think."
Their conversations always have this quiet introspective depth which I find so enticing.
Sentences like This summary of his situation struck Jack like a bolt of frozen grief. are classic Robinson - I just love that metaphor about "frozen grief," it feels so real, so tangible.

The character Jack is so delicately drawn that, despite his many, many failures, we are rooting for him and his moments of self-realization feel almost euphoric for the reader:
So many things made no sense to him at all, which is one reason he had kept to himself so many years. He regretted this as often as he realized he had learned next to nothing about the world."
This sounds as familiar perhaps, to me at least, as "You know nothing Jon Snow."

More gorgeous language from Robinson: But once in a lifetime, maybe, you look at a stranger and you see a soul, a glorious presence out of place in the world. Fortunately for Jack, Della has this perception of Jack and this is what drives their love story forward. There is also a lot of sharing of dreams that forms the core of the narrative, to the point that even the buildings can do so: Buildings dream at night, and their dreams have a particular character. Or perhaps at night they awaken. There is nothing cordial or accommodating about buildings, whatever they might let people believe. The stresses of simply standing there, preposterous constructions, Euclidian like nothing in nature, the ground heaving under them, rain seeping in while their joints go slack with rot. They speak disgruntlement, creaks and groans, and less nameable sounds of the kind that suggest presence of the kind that is conjured only by emptiness. Robinson is such a master of prose!

The book, for me at least, is definitely worthy of a second Pulitzer for its wonderful author. I loved several other books being considered, but as it is too late to reward Philip Roth for a deserved second prize, I would like to see Robinson justly rewarded. Just read the final paragraph and you will probably be as spellbound as I was.

[Marialyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderfully written introspective on two people who are lonely, hurt, and find one another and share their beliefs and love. It's a keen look at John Ames Boughton, the son of a Presbyterian minister, and Della Miles, an African American, daughter of a preacher. Taking place in Gilead, the well. known place of the books that precede this one, we find a beautiful love story, one that transcends time and the unrest and discrimination of the South.

Jack is ever so troubled, seeing himself as less than nothing, a failure, a drunk, a draft dodger. As his relationship with Della proceeds, he finds himself looking at a different Jack, one who has a poetic side, a lover of literature, a value he has never considered, a person to love. Her love for him is fraught with the dangers of the time and develops slowly and beautifully.

Wondrously written as all the books about Gilead are, this book is breathtaking in its view, and enables the reader to once again view the times of life and its unhappiness and joy after the war. Truly a recommended read.
Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of this story due out September 29, 2020

[Cheri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jack Boughton is the son of Gilead, Iowa’s Minister Boughton, named after John Ames, the preacher and narrator of Robinson’s Gilead. This fourth in Robinson’s connected volumes is his story, revealing much about Jack, and the woman he meets, and falls in love with. Della Miles – a teacher who is the daughter of an important black family in Memphis.

Jack is viewed by others as a good-for-nothing bum, indeed, he views himself a less-than. He is a man who has been to prison, a draft dodger during WWII, and tends to enjoy the bottle too much and too often, and he often finds himself on the wrong side of the law as well as the wrong side of those who he owes money. Money he can never repay and so he resorts to petty theft, but ends up either drinking it away, or losing it one way or another, no matter his intentions.

And when he meets Della Miles she sees another side of him. Over time, she is drawn to his poetic nature, his love of literature and eventually a love develops, slowly, unevenly, and with much back and forth, over time. Each knowing that in this place and time, and because of these constructs of the world - their love not approved by society - their love would need to be hidden from the world.

For those who have read, and loved, Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead,Home,Lila this will be a must read, as the fourth novel in this collection. For now, I am content to savor the moments I have found in reading Jack, re-reading the many excerpts I have highlighted over and over again.

Jack is simply a lovely, beautifully shared reflection on life and love, and the salvation that is conveyed to us through love.


Published: 29 Sep 2020

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Farrar, Straus and Giroux via NetGalley

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marilynne Robinson’s “Jack” is her fourth installment of the Ames/Boughton family saga. True to her literary prowess this is a beautifully written novel that brings the reader into an American cultural era, in this story, post WWII and the Jim Crow time. Reading “Jack” requires full attention to detail, to every long sentence.

“Gilead” is still my favorite in the saga. I continue to find that novel to be one of the most memorable to me. If one is to read any of her novels, “Gilead” is the one to read. In “Jack”, Robinson sets her story on Reverend Boughton’s prodigal son. Jack has fleeting parts in her previous stories, and we know that Jack is the “disappointment” and “heartbreak” of the family. Robinson provides a glimpse of Jack that his family is not privy to see. He is a sad-sac, yet it’s a life choice. I found it difficult to find empathy for Jack. He left me frustrated.

“Jack” is mostly a meditation in which Jack reflects upon his life and his position in life. Through an unforeseen mishap, Jack meets Della, a black woman from a strong religious family. Della mistakes him for a Reverend after he helps her pick up scattered papers on a rainy street in St. Louis. She invites him for tea, scandalous in the Jim Crow days. They find that they both love poetry. Della apparently falls in love, and Jack steals two important novels from her. She knows this and still meets him for a dinner, where he absconds without paying the check. Robinson does not provide any inner musings of Della, so it is difficult to understand why she could possibly find him suitable.

This is an ill-fated love story. All of Della’s family is firmly against her relationship with a white man. Robinson doesn’t delve into what Della’s family would do with regard to Jack’s lack of a moral compass. I felt this was similar to that movie “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” in which a black and white family find out that their children are in love, Well, in that movie, I didn’t understand Sydney Poitier’s character attraction to the ditzy white girl. In this case, Della is a respectable teacher, with a respectable background, and she finds Jack to be attractive after all he did to her and given his life circumstances. Yes, he can recite poetry, and seems to be mannerly, but he’s a thief, a drunk, liar, and a deadbeat. Why Della, why?

Ok, if you can get over the premise that Della is in love with Jack, this is a fantastic story of “illicit” love in the time of Jim Crow. Also Robinson writes of a time period in which the “black” areas of cities were taken by eminent domain whenever white people wanted their land. It was common at that time that the black areas were moved to suite the city planners.

Robinson is poetic in were literary style. Her sentences, even when they are long, are a thing of amazement. Her cultural insights of a particular time in American history are astounding. She did not sell me on Della’s attraction to Jack. Jack, I could understand his attraction to Della as she puts up with him.

My rating: 5 stars for literary skills. 3-4 stars for story content.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Friday, the 2021 Tournament of Books Long list came out, and I had a healthy number of books from it already on hand that I hadn't read yet. So I picked up this book, which I had from the publisher through Edelweiss but was a bit delayed in reading.

This book fits in with all the Gilead novels, which tell pieces of the same story from different perspectives. I was surprised when Lila came out and definitely didn't expect another one after that. Since a lot of people ask, you can read this as a standalone in the sense that it has its own start and finish, but it will mean a lot more in the context of the other three. For me, it had been years since I read the others and I was a bit hazy on the details.

And Robinson doesn't repeat herself. Since she assumed we know three versions of Jack's story already, she jumps in with a disagreement he is having with a woman, and the reader does not immediately know what is happening. All is revealed, but time is not entirely linear in Gilead and we will revisit some of the story a few times, from different angles.

Robinson is obsessed with Calvinism and other deep regions of thought where religion and philosophy intersect. I went to see her speak once and she was a lot more deep and narrow than I was particularly interested in, if I'm being honest. This novel is full of that type of rumination. Jack spends a lot of time reading in the public library so his vocabulary is rich and full of poetic meanderings. Della teaches English, so she contributes her own ideas. The entire 1/3 and many other chunks of the novel are long conversations of these two characters talking. And reading friend, not a lot happens, until it does.

It was nice to shift a bit from character study to ideas, but I didn't get nearly enough from Della's perspective. Some of her choices seemed strange and I don't really understand her well. Does this mean we will end up with a fifth novel? Would Robinson dare to try to write in the voice of an African American character? I'm not sure she should but I'm also not sure she should have written this novel without it, if that makes sense.

Regardless, this has a lot to discuss, making it a great book to be in the Tournament of Books.

ETA 11/23 - I listened to the KCRW Bookworm episode with Marilynne Robinson and I loved what she had to say about how she thinks of Jack - "I was using him as a surrogate for myself in terms of thinking what the world would seem like were we less defended against it."

[Marc Lamot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Again, this was a tough read. I earlier wrote that Marilynne Robinson does not make it easy for her readers: her themes (essentially the good and evil in humans, how we deal with them as individuals and how much of this struggle stays out of our grip) are particularly heavy-handed, and her meticulous writing style requires constant concentration. But what a wealth of insight in the human soul this reveals!

In this fourth part of the Gilead series Robinson remains on familiar territory: just like in the second part (Home), the focus again is on Jack, the black sheep of the Boughton family. And in itself we don't learn much new: from ‘Home’ we already knew that Jack is a drunkard and a thief, who is all too aware of his 'badness', and we knew about his problematic relationship with the black Della Miles. But in this part Robinson digs much deeper into this 'doomed' soul. It almost hurts to be confronted with Jack's constant worrying, his permanent insecurity, and his sickening sense of inferiority. Robinson makes tangible how people on the margins of society continually assess how they are viewed askance by others (who are in a better position), and how powerless they are to pull themselves out of the swamp. What is special about Jack is that he has developed his own philosophy of life from that situation, namely to cause as little harm as possible; "harmness" becomes an obsession for him. In vain of course.

And then there is the romance between Jack and Della, a romance whose foundation we cannot quite fathom, but which develops so delicately and touchingly that you have to be captivated by it. In essence it seems like just another Romeo and Juliet story, doomed as both protagonists are by their background and by the prevailing laws (including a quite sobering look at the moral rigidity of the African American community). What struck me most in the dialogues between Jack and Della was how often they speak about light and dark, perhaps a very obvious metaphor here, but one that aptly summarizes the dilemma of this couple. Ultimately, in this part Robinson addresses the question of whether Jack can be saved by Della, or – in other words - whether someone who is damned can be saved by love, a question that was previously central to Dostoevsky (especially in Crime and Punishment). Indeed, Robinson competes with the greatest and she stands tall. That says enough.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delightfully slow love story set in St. Louis sometime in the post-war 40s or early 50s. You root for it to work out, but worry that it won’t given that the man is white and the woman black at a time when even cohabitation is illegal in Missouri and many other states. The beauty is in how the tale is told and Robison’s skill in character development and engaging a reader’s fascination with the unfolding relationship and its fate.

In tone and setting, this novel is very much in keeping with her series of connected novels about the rural residents of the fictional Gilead, Iowa, which I have enjoyed a lot. A shortlist of what I appreciate from her writing is her success at harnessing minimalism to create a human microscosm in a small community, her elegance in portraying character development, rich dialog, effective embedding of the story into a realistic community, empathetic exploration of internal states and emotions, and recurring focus on spirituality. With her last one, Lila, I appreciated the subtle humor of an unlikely love affair between a minister and a tough, uneducated woman who was raised in an orphanage and, as an emblem of her tough-knocks life, carries a knife. A scene that stands out or me is their first chance meeting on a village path in which subtle flirting emerges while discussing her bucket of fish. The first encounter in this one, where the strangers spend a rainy night in a cemetery after getting locked in after closing time, is also comparably odd, comic, and a gamble in terms of likely success in the relationship. In this case, the male lead, Jack Broughton has the disreputable history and the woman, Della Miles, , is a respectable school teacher from a religious middle class family from Tennessee.

Jack is the loner son of Presbyterian minister in Gilead who dropped out of college and lives off of a monthly allowance from his brother, minor thefts, and odd jobs . We don’t learn why he has such low ambition or why he needs to check out so often using alcohol until later, but we can identify with the overriding goal in his thoughts to do no harm to anyone. Della warms to his playful and courteous attentions and basks in their common interests in poetry, Shakespeare, gospel music, and concern over the growing nihilism in the world. Such a wonderful narrative of the courageous steps to develop trust across so many obvious barriers, including the universal challenge of revealing the best of oneself without hiding too much of one’s mistakes or dark secrets. All of us every day must face the risk of harm to loved ones by not fulfilling expectations, but only rarely such as extreme barrier Jack and Della here face from the racist morality of her family and community. Despite being an atheist, Jack finds a significant sounding board for his choices from the minister of a black Methodist church and also an unlikely ally among Della’s large extended family.

To show her lean, effective prose a work, here are quotes from Della and Jack on their long night at the graveyard and a thought of Jack’s that epitomizes his cautious approach.

Della: It just seems to me something as though—if we were the only ones left after the world ended, and we made the rules—they might work just as well-- …

Jack: Let me guess. Your father’s favorite daughter is wandering the night with a disreputable white man. Barefoot, In a cemetery. If she’s caught at it, the scandal will echo down the ages, into the furthest reaches of Tennessee, all its strange particulars scrutinized. Forever. And he was so proud of you. …

Jack’s mind: He didn’t hold her hand a second longer than he should have.

This book was provided for review by the publisher through the Netgalley program.

[B. H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Coming out of my cage no-reviews for 2020 silence to say that I want this to be shot straight into my veins.

Edit: I am going to leave the original "review" up because it still encapsulates succinctly how I feel about Robinson's writing. Now, on to the actual review.

Jack's story was always going to be about grace and predestination. If I had to encapsulate Jack it would be using a quote from Gilead:

Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.

And yet, despite this quote, I find that Jack as a book is much closer to Housekeeping than say, Gilead or especially Home. What does this mean in practice?

It means that in a sense Jack as a character is mostly a tool used by Robinson to explore a theological idea. But the beauty of Robinson's writing is her ability to have the story feel so human and so real, while she's essentially writing a treatise on the power of grace. Jack is an atheist brought up in a Presbyterian home, raised by a Presbyterian preacher. Now, the issue, of course, is that no atheist can be chosen by God for "man is saved by faith alone." Beyond his atheism, everything Jack does seems to be proof of his fallen nature, from his childhood proclivity to petty thievery and mischief, to the fact that as an adult, the more he tries to live a life that is devoid of harm, the more he still somehow manages to cause harm.

But is Jack really fallen beyond redemption? Are his atheism and destitution really a sign of future eternal damnation? I personally don't think so and something tells me Robinson doesn't think so either. See, Jack is both a love story and a story about love. For, Robinson seems to argue, not only is love *like* grace, but love itself might actually be one way that the grace of God manifests itself in the human realm (beyond mere faith and prosperity). So Della, the model daughter of a respected African-American family, falls in love with Jack, a white bum, when they spend the night talking about the end of the world in a cemetery. And she continues to stand by his side despite his mistakes, in conscious defiance of anti-miscegenation laws and the disapproval of her own family. The only explication she gives to Jack for falling in love with him despite his self-perceived worthlessness?

[Because] once in a lifetime, maybe, you look at a stranger and you see a soul, a glorious presence out of place in the world. And if you love God, everyone choice is made for you.

By framing this as a story about predestination and grace, which it is, I still feel that I am not doing Robinson justice. I wonder if by using this framing, I am undervaluing the meticulous, fantastic work that goes into building characters like Jack and Della, into building a story where religion matters not because it matters to Robinson intellectually but because (even if you are an atheist) it can shape you in ways you can't quite shake off.

If I had one small gripe is that this book works best when Jack is in close interaction with others. His painful loneliness and defeatism can sometimes begin to feel wearisome, as he wanders the streets of St. Louis alone, at night, especially when you remember that he has a family who loves him back in Iowa. But it's much easier to understand Jack, to feel for him, when his sense of inadequacy chafes against other people's ability to be in this world without feeling like a burden to it, when he is around people who seem able to navigate normal human interactions without having to think too hard about them.

But just like with Housekeeping (which I found okay at first, but then ended up crying myself thorough the last pages when I re-read it last year), this will be a book that will reward careful re-reading, of the kind where you pay attention to how every sentence is constructed, to the dense intertextual references that enrich this text more explicitly here than every before in Robinson's oeuvre. I think I was in this painful rush to read it all that I didn't allow myself to savor it at moments. Still, what a masterpiece of how painful it is to be human.

Dear friend, the loneliness might kill me.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of all, this is a love story. There is Jack, whom readers were introduced to in Robinson’s previous books set in the small town of Gilead, Iowa (“Gilead”, “Home” and “Lila”). He is the atheist son of a minister and has gravitated to a semi-homeless state of existence. He has a problem with alcohol, habitually pilfers, and has spent time in prison for a crime he didn’t commit (but certainly could have). He also has a gentle soul, spending hours in the poetry section of the library and enjoys playing the piano when given the opportunity. He falls in love with Della Miles.

Della is a high school teacher, and also a child of a minister—and black. Miscegenation between the races is against the law in post-WWII America, so falling in love with Jack is a high-risk proposition. Unsurprisingly, her family is ardently opposed to their relationship. Jack tries repeatedly to do the ‘right thing’ and leave her alone.

This is a character study of Jack, consumed by self-loathing, mostly unemployed, and periodically in a state of disgrace. He feels alienated from the world. And that is what he shares with Della, a feeling of alienation.

This may be considered a Calvinist romance. Robinson is concerned with “common grace”—the capacity shared by all human creatures for receiving the gifts of life with wonder and gratitude, regardless of their belief in religion or God. Enjoy.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marilynne Robinson's Gilead was my novel of the year in 2015 when I came to it, and the other volumes of the trilogy, Home and Lila, rather belatedly on the publication of the last of the three, particularly notable for its reverent and sympathetic, but at the same time theologically questioning exploration of religious faith, a rare thing indeed in modern literature.

The three novels were (as Rachel Sykes observes in this article http://ijas.iaas.ie/issue-6-rachel-sy...) more "simultaneous texts" than a conventional trilogy, even Lila, which, while looking back on the 'past' life of the eponymous subject, does so from the standpoint of her memories of these events in the 'present' of the trilogy (1956 in Ohio).

Jack is in that sense rather distinct, in that it is written from the standpoint of a previous period (around 8 years before the trilogy) and place (St Louis in Missouri). It picks up on the character of Jack, or to give him his full name John Ames Broughton, son of the Presbyterian preacher John Broughton and named after his friend and fellow pastor, the narrator of Gilead, John Ames, and in particular the story he tells Ames at the end of that novel of his common-law marriage to Della Miles, a black woman, and also daughter of a preacher (who is aware of, and strongly opposed to, their relationship), and with whom he has had a son:

He cleared his throat. ‘We are married in the eyes of God, as they say. Who does not provide a certificate, but who also does not enforce anti-miscegenation laws. The Deus Absconditus at His most benign. Sorry.’ He smiled. ‘In the eyes of God we have been man and wife for about eight years. We have lived as man and wife a total of seventeen months, two weeks, and a day.’

Their relationship was illegal in Missouri, incredibly one of 16 US states whose anti-miscegenation laws (reminscent of Nazi Germany and apartheid-era South Africa) were overturned only by a Surpreme Court decision in 1967. That 15 of those 16 states gave Donald Trump 172 of his electoral college votes in 2016 rather tells its own story, and emphasises why this novel is so timely. Interestingly in this novel we learn the opposition from Della's father to their relationship is more his own view that the 'races' (*) should be kept separate, to help the improvement of his own people.

(* as another recent book I've read points out - Superior: The Return of Race Science - race itself being a rather nonsensical concept)

The story Jack tells (or rather the narrator tells) in this novel is subtly different to the account he was to give Ames 8 years later. For example, in both accounts, at his and Della's first meeting she mistook him for a preacher, but in this (presumably the real) story she discovers the truth for herself, whereas in his later account he almost immediately puts her right.

Gilead was told in the first person but for Home and Lila Robinson switched to a very close third person, which in Lila in particular led me to question whether I was reading Lila's thoughts or the author's. The device works more credibly for Jack as the theological inspired musings are rather more appropriate.

“I’m a simple man who was brought up by a complicated man. So I have mannerisms and so on. Vocabulary. People can be misled.”

And while a non-believer - although as he tells Ames in Gilead, not so much an atheist ‘It is probably truer to say I am in a state of categorical unbelief. I don’t even believe God doesn’t exist, if you see what I mean. - his thoughts are infused with theological influence, perhaps more so that he realises:

If the Fall had made sinfulness pervasive and inescapable, then correction might be abrupt and arbitrary, to draw attention to itself as the assurance of an ultimate order without reference to specific wrongs, which, in a post-lapsarian world, must all more or less run together. These are the terms in which he made sense of most bad surprises. They were of little use except in retrospect, which had not arrived yet.

Jack is aware he is hardly a suitable partner for Della, as he tells (another!) Minister at a Baptist church he briefly attends, in part for the food and in part for having someone to whom he can have the conversations he might, in other circumstances, have with his with his own father.

“All right, I’ll tell you. I’m a gifted thief. I lie fluently, often for no reason. I’m a bad but confirmed drunk. I have no talent for friendship. What talents I do have I make no use of. I am aware instantly and almost obsessively of anything fragile, with the thought that I must and will break it. This has been true of me my whole life. I isolate myself as a way of limiting the harm I can do. And here I am with a wife! Of whom I know more good than you have any hint of, to whom I could do a thousand kinds of harm, never meaning to, or meaning to.”

The minister said, “Good Lord.”

The novel doesn't always give us a convincing account of how Jack came to be the rogue he is, but realistically so as he doesn't always understand himself:

He had never been good at explaining things he did. It was just alarming to him to consider how much sense they always made at the time, or in any case, how unavoidable they seemed. He suspected he drank to give himself a way of accounting for the vast difference between any present situation and the intentions that brought him to it.

Della's own side - as a reverse Mrs Merton-Debbie McGee - quite what she sees in the drunk-lying-dissolute-loner Jack - is rather absent from the story, although again this is consistent with the narrow third-person narration (and perhaps there is a fifth novel Della coming one day?), but she does suggest that she senses a purity to his soul, rather to Jack's mystification.

To the extent Jack has a philosophy of life it is, as noted above, to avoid others lest he does them harm, a realisation and resolution that he came to some time before this novel is set, when he tried to find the other key woman in his past, the girl he seduced and got pregnant back in his days in Gilead (Jack fled the scene, and the child died at a young age, a story, as with his 2 years in prison, he has yet to confess to Della).

Then it was that he had first realized what an exquisite thing harmlessness must be, what an absolute courtesy to things seen and unseen, to the bruised reed and the smoldering wick. If he could not achieve harmlessness, his very failures would give him much to consider. He would abandon all casuistry, surrender all thought of greater and lesser where transgressions were concerned, even drop the distinction between accident and intention.

This is a theme he returns to repeatedly, one notable passage being (the quote from Robert Frost, one of several poets and poems that play a key role in the text, and which cement the relationship between Della and Jack, Shakespeare, particularly Hamlet, forming another key reference):

He was acquainted with despair. The thought made him laugh. He had to admit that he found it interesting, which was a mercy, and which made it something less than despair, bad as it was.

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.

Much of the time this was his favorite poem. The second line seemed to him like very truth. It was on the basis of the slight and subtle encouragements offered by despair that he had discovered a new aspiration, harmlessness, which accorded well enough with his habits if not his disposition. Keeping his distance was a favor, a courtesy, to all those strangers who might, probably would, emerge somehow poorer for proximity to him.

But so he had lived, more or less, until he met Della.

Recommended - a strong 4 star read.

Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC.

[Kenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

So wonderful.

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m a gifted thief. I lie fluently, often for no reason. I’m a bad but confirmed drunk. I have no talent for friendship. What talents I do have I make no use of. I am aware instantly and almost obsessively of anything fragile, with the thought that I must and will break it. This has been true of me my whole life. I isolate myself as a way of limiting the harm I can do. And here I am with a wife! Of whom I know more good than you have any hint of, to whom I could do a thousand kinds of harm, never meaning to, or meaning to.

I first encountered the titular character of Jack in Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Gilead: In that earlier work, John “Jack” Ames Boughton returns to the town of Gilead as the prodigal son of its upstanding and long-suffering Presbyterian Minister; eventually revealing that he had been joined in a challenging (and illegal) marriage with a Black woman. In Jack, Robinson goes back to the beginning of Jack and Della’s relationship (which started shortly after WWII), and superficially, everything about this story sparked with me; heart and mind. Marilynne Robinson is a deep thinker and masterful writer; no words are wasted in her use of this fictional storyline to explore complex theological concepts. But while I completely engaged with Jack’s struggles, and often read with my heart in my throat as he made bad decision after bad decision, I couldn’t shake being slightly offended on behalf of dear Della — she seems to be a too-good-to-be-true archetype (instead of an actual human being), meant to test Jack’s commitments to atheism and nihilism, and the fact that she is Black (and considered a traitor to her race by her family) seems an unnecessary complication that doesn’t do justice to her as a person. Ultimately, Jack is a complex and fully human character (who fulfills a protagonist’s requirements of challenge and change) and I couldn’t help but connect with him. On the other hand, Della is a catalyzing agent for Jack and little more, and as the main character of colour in this book, I think that Robinson misstepped by not making her more knowable or believable. Otherwise, a stunning addition to the Gilead series. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in the final forms.)

Dear Jesus, what was he doing? This was not what he had promised himself. This was not harmlessness. He was sure he had no right to involve her in so much potential misery. How often had he thought this? But she had the right to involve herself, or had claimed the right, holding his hand the way she had. She was young, the daughter of a protective family. She might have no idea yet that embarrassment, relentless, punitive scorn, can wear away at a soul until it recedes into wordless loneliness. God in the silence. In the deep darkness. The highest privilege, his father said. He was usually speaking of death, of course. The congregant’s soul had entered the Holy of Holies. Jack sometimes called this life he had lived prevenient death. He had learned that for all its comforts and discomforts, its stark silence first of all, there was clearly no reprieve from doing harm.

It’s easy to see what any man would find attractive about Miss Della Miles: young and lovely, poised and thoughtful, this daughter of a Memphis-based Methodist Bishop received a college education and fulfilled her dream of moving to St. Louis in order to teach English at Sumner High (the first high school for African-American students west of the Mississippi River). As for Jack Boughton: he’s an ex-con, a drunk, and by his own description, an old, white bum whose only stated goal in life is an aspiration to harmlessness (rarely achieved). So, despite being raised “to develop self-sufficiency in the Negro race by the practice of separatism”, and despite anti-miscegenation laws that could see Della jailed for their relationship, a bit of shared poetry and exaggerated gallantry are somehow enough for this young woman to risk losing her family, job, and freedom in order to be with the strange white man who has taken to roaming her neighbourhood at night, causing a stir in the community that reaches her family back in Memphis. As an actual human woman living with these stakes, I don’t see why Della would look twice at the scarecrow with the frayed cuffs and the whisky breath, but to Marilynne Robinson’s purpose, Della is more a symbol of God’s grace towards the fallen Jack than an actual person (and again, I feel slightly offended on Della’s behalf, only partly related to race).

According to the most relevant definition I could find, grace is "the love and mercy given to us by God because God desires us to have it, not necessarily because of anything we have done to earn it”; and boy, does Jack work hard at rejecting love and mercy. As in the other books that I’ve read in this series, this volume has several scenes with ministers (and the children of ministers) discussing Christian doctrine, all while the doctrine-in-action plays out in the background (and in case I’m making this sound like it belongs in the Christian Fiction section of a bookstore, these discussions are more philosophical than missionary). I was struck by Jack’s use of the word “prevenient” in that last passage (a word I had never heard before) and discovered that it is often used by Calvinists — as in “prevenient grace” — to explain free will (or, if one prefers, “free won’t”), and that knowledge furthered my understanding of what Robinson was trying to achieve here. (And as I am nothing like a Calvinist, it's all fascinating to the parts of my brain that are interested in anthropology and culture; people don't need to live on the other side of the world from me for me to be interested in how they live and what they believe.)

He let her look, not even lowering his eyes. He was waiting to see what she would make of him. And then he would be what she made of him.

Taken as a straight story, the plot-points of Jack’s life and actions are compelling and affecting; this is a well-written tale that completely captures postwar America and its ongoing struggles with racial and social equality. But of course Marilynne Robinson’s focus here isn’t solely on the historical details of her plot: over the course of the Gilead series, she has been exploring and demonstrating the tenets of Christian faith, and this elevated intention does serve to elevate the whole project — you know you’re reading something with heft and purpose. I was made to care for Jack and I was rooting for him to find salvation (in the secular sense); I just wish that Della felt more like Jack’s partner than God’s instrument.

[Kuszma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ha innen nézem, szerelmes regény. Adott két ember, aki szereti egymást: Della és Jack. Mi baj lehet? Nos, minden. Különben a szerelmes regény nem is létezhetne. Hisz a nő tanár, a férfi pedig csavargó. De ez még hagyján! A férfi fehér, a nő fekete. Ez abban a történelmi időben pedig nem egyszerűen egy külső nehézség, amivel meg kell küzdeni, hanem konkrétan a főbűn, a társadalmi nonszensz maga. Ilyen körülmények között a kérdés nem csak az, hogy két ember hajlandó-e megküzdeni egymásért a világgal, hanem hogy kockára tehetik-e a másik egzisztenciáját egy olyan, alapvetően önző dolog miatt, mint a saját szerelmük. Mert ha csak lelépnek, az a másiknak tűrhetetlenül fáj, igaz. De ha ott maradnak, akkor lehet, tönkreteszik, akit szeretnek.

Ha meg onnan nézem, csavargóregény. Itt van ez a Jack, akit a Gilead-sorozatból már ismerünk. Ő a család fekete báránya, aki kihullott minden rostán. Tolvaj, börtöntöltelék, iszákos, rossz adós és megbízhatatlan fráter, ideje egy részében pedig még hajléktalan is. Van egyáltalán esélye arra, hogy belekapaszkodhasson valamibe? Van olyan erő, ami kimozdíthatja a permanens kudarcraítéltségből? Át tudja lépni a saját árnyékát valaki, akinek annyira a létállapotává vált a szégyen, hogy ha megbocsátanak neki, az kényelmetlen érzéssel tölti el?

Lenyűgöz Robinson bátorsága, az, ahogy mer a saját ritmusában énekelni. Ennek a könyvnek az első száz oldala tulajdonképpen nem több, mint egyetlen éjszakai beszélgetés egy temetőben a két főhős között: merő tétova tapogatózás, két ember megpróbálja kitalálni, a másik harap-e. Lehetne vontatott, de nem az, tele van élettel, olyan szívvel és ésszel skiccel fel egy emberi kapcsolatot, hogy beleszédülök. Baromi merész húzás egy ilyet megreszkírozni.

A legtöbb író a regényt olyasvalaminek tartja, amit a konfliktusok strukturálnak, náluk a szöveg általában egy dramaturgiai csúcs felé halad, a regény „csak” e csúcsokra vezető mondatlépcsők egymásutánisága. Robinson teljesen másképp képzeli el az irodalmat. Az ő regényei nem sodró folyók, hanem lágy, csendes hullámzások. Áll bennük az ember, és konkrétan érzi, lemossák róla a rosszat. Az egyik legnagyobb élő írónknak tartom.

[Meike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I see why Robinson has been compared to the great Sherwood Anderson: She chronicles the lives of small people in a minor American city in the middle of nowhere - hence, the people who really make up America - , and she gives them dignity and complexity, thus elevating them to heroes with dramatic destinies. Every part of her "Gilead" series (Gilead being the name of the aforementioned small town in the Midwest) focuses on different inhabitants, so the literary project develops into a panoroma of American life. In this fourth part, Robinson tells the love story between the title-giving Jack, son of a priesterman (of course) and vagabond at heart, and Della, a Black teacher - a scandalous affair in the 1950's, when the novel is set.

While the book ponders love, grace, and American history, the language always remains calm, held back and accessible, with strong reliance on oral traditions. Della represents the serious, hard-working middle class that supports and educates the community (which underlines the absurdity of segregationist America), while Jack comes from a respected background, but intentionally gave up on the values of small-town America in order to experience what lies outside this safe, known world. Religious motifs and questions of morality play an important role, but are presented and discussed in an elegant way.

So as you see, there is not much to say against this kind of literature - alas, it's just not to my taste, which is of course a statement about me, not about the book. I like more experimental, punchier, louder literature - but that's exactly what Robinson does not aim to do, so more power to her, this woman knows her craft.

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fourth part of Robinson's Gilead series returns to one of the main protagonists of the second part Home, and fills in the back story of Jack (John Ames) Boughton, the prodigal son whose return to Gilead drives that book, which was the first part I read and is still my favourite, perhaps because it displays the most sympathy for the non-religious.

Most of the book takes place several years earlier in St Louis, Missouri, and the story describes Jack's lifestyle there and how he became involved with Della, the mother of his child, a respectable black teacher and preacher's daughter, and the ramifications of their relationship. Needless to say this portrait is not a flattering one, but he is a fully realised character and Robinson succeeds in making his self-destructive actions understandable in the context of a time and place where racial laws were so dominant.

The story is told in a very non-linear way, starting in medias res as Jack is trying to explain to Della why he abandoned her in a restaurant, and at times going back further to fill in the gaps. Since what happens later is already known to those who have read the rest of the trilogy, this seems appropriate, but it does demand attention from the reader.

One of these days I should go back and read all four books end to end, since I suspect that I have forgotten rather too much since reading the others to put this one properly in context. They are all very fine works, that also work as stand alone novels.

[Ends of the Word · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I read Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead” some years back, I felt it was one of the best books I had come across in a long time. Set in in 1950s Iowa, it consists of a long letter from a dying 76-year old Congregationalist minister John Ames to his little son, the unexpected blessing of his old age. As Ames sifts through his memories, the story of his family (particularly his preacher father and grandfather) and the community which they served starts to take shape. Old pains and preoccupations resurface - particularly those related to the minister's godson and namesake John Ames “Jack” Boughton. A troublemaker in childhood, youth and well into adulthood, is there the possibility of salvation for Boughton as well? Will God's grace ever touch him?

The passage of time has not dulled my admiration for this novel, which is lyrical, poetical, infused with (a Calvinist) theology yet utterly readable. Since Gilead, Robinson returned to the fictional world she created with two other volumes – Home and Lila – which are not sequels as such but, rather, “parallel narratives” featuring the same setting and characters but told from different perspectives.

Jack is the latest addition to the fold. It is, in some ways, a prequel to the “trilogy”, in that is is set in St Louis, Missouri around a decade before the “present” of the other three novels. Its protagonist is John Ames Boughton, the troublemaker who was so much on the mind of his godfather John Ames in Gilead. Jack is the troublemaker of the family, a vagrant living a down-and-out life which also featured a stint in prison. The novel is an account of his relationship with Della Miles, a black woman and daughter of a preacher. The relationship starts off as an unlikely friendship, but soon develops into a love affair, despite the strong opposition of Della’s family.

The novel is told in the third person but, very evidently, from the perspective of Jack. Jack is an interesting case study. He is a prodigal son, a flawed character, an intrinsically good man who, however, seems constantly drawn to evil. He has, however, a strong self-awareness, which leads him to admit that he has not much to offer Della, whom he raises on a pedestal as the epitome of goodness. Much of the novel shows Jack’s tentative steps towards letting himself being overcome by love – and not just any “love”, but a transformative one laced with divine grace.

If all this sounds very theological, be prepared that it is. And whilst Gilead, despite its deep and overt religious themes, was a gripping read, I must admit that I had to make an effort to read through Jack. Certain episodes, such as a passage early on in the novel featuring a long night spent by the lovers in a cemetery (debating theology, I hasten to clarify, rather than indulging in some Goth hanky-panky), became simply too tedious for my liking.

Obviously, the problem might have been that I was not in the mood for heavy stuff. Indeed, there have been several rave reviews of the novel, including one by Sarah Perry in the Guardian. Perry herself writes novels infused with theology of a Calvinist bent (Melmoth comes to mind) and is probably much better-placed than I am to appreciate Robinson’s “Calvinist romance”. I wish, though, that Jack were as exciting as Perry’s theological Gothic. Or, for that matter, as gripping as Robinson’s own Gilead.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/20...

[☆LaurA☆ · Rating 4 out of 5]

"– Io sono il Principe delle tenebre.
– No, è un chiacchierone con i buchi nei calzini."

Jack è un uomo non piú giovane, che vive di espedienti e dell’elemosina fraterna, si nutre di pasti occasionali, alcol e vergogna, e ha ormai un’unica ambizione: l’innocuità.

Scappato a St. Louis da Gilead, per nutrire la sua voglia di solitudine e sofferenza.
Non sa che qui incontrerà lei, Della, una donna graziosa, colta, che lo farà innamorare immediatamente, peccato solo sia una donna di colore e in quegli anni era fuori legge il matrimonio tra bianchi e neri.
Un amore che non ha futuro, ma che vuole andare contro tutto e tutti.
Un romanzo intimo, che scende nelle profondità dell'animo di Jack, non propriamente il figlio perfetto, ma quel figlio che hai paura di perdere.
Jack che è condannato a rompere qualsiasi cosa di bello gli capiti, che sa che le cose belle durano un battito di ciglia e che non riesce a gioirne perché pensa troppo, si fa mille domande e un sacco di problemi.

Mi è mancato qualcosa però in questa storia, mi è mancata l'intimità con Jack.
La Robinson ha esagerato forse con un linguaggio troppo forbito, da rendere a tratti ostica la lettura.
Sarà la mia ignoranza, ma tanto quanto Jack è un poveraccio, mascalzone, ladruncolo da quattro soldi,  tanto più non si rispecchia nel linguaggio in cui viene raccontato.

Ho concluso la saga familiare dei Boughton, ho lasciato tanto dentro queste pagine e in Jack ho lasciato più di quanto credevo possibile.
Perché se un uomo non riesce a mantenere la parola data, come può fare promesse?

«Devo rinunciare a te perché ti amo»

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marilynne Robinson is among a handful of my favorite contemporary novelists. Based on her initial four novels, I think of Robinson as Nobel Prize worthy. Jack, Robinson’s latest, is her fifth novel and the fourth of her Gilead series, in which she has created a seemingly simple but emotionally rich world with a small cast of memorable characters searching to understand themselves, each other, their lives, and their relationship to their faiths. I’ve admired and appreciated Robinson for her careful and elegant prose, where every sentence and every word fill a specific purpose necessary for telling Robinson’s stories and explaining her characters.

Reading Jack, I missed the strong, direct first person voice of Ruth in Housekeeping. Jack feels much talkier, much more verbose than Robinson’s previous novels. I wonder if this represents Robinson’s imagining of Jack — a change in character — or a change in Robinson’s style? Authors, of course, adapt their styles, just as readers prefer some styles to others. The St. Louis of Jack is not the Fingerbone of Housekeeping, and Jack is not Housekeeping’s Ruth. Where Robinson’s previous novels felt meticulously honed and sculpted, Jack feels near bloated. Where theology and faith were undertones in Gilead, Home, and Lila, gently binding characters together, in Jack Robinson transforms these undertones into overbearing overtones. This is true throughout Jack, but especially so in the interminable opening graveyard scene with its unlikely, strained, unconvincing dialog: at times charming and heart-warming, but nonetheless tedious.

At the risk of sounding cranky and unfair to an author I esteem, I found that Robinson’s prose in Jack ranged from magnificent to tiresome, all embedded in a cliched and curiously dated story of Della Miles, a young Black high school English teacher, thoroughly grounded in her faith, her church, and her family, falling in love with ne’er-do-well older white guy, who accurately describes himself as ”a confirmed, inveterate bum”. And not just any older white guy. Jack has his charms: he enjoys poetry; he plays piano; he’s thoughtful, especially about himself; and he’s a fine dancer. While Della and perhaps Robinson see Jack as a damaged soul, I see in Robinson’s portrayal of Jack signs of a low level sociopath: his admitted need to inflict hurt, his rejection of his family paired with his willingness to rely on them for money, his thieving just because he can and because he ”never quite learned to distinguish mine from thine”, his casual destruction of public library books. As Jack says, ”’I’m a gifted thief. I lie frequently, often for no reason. I’m a bad but confirmed drunk. I have no talent for friendship. What talents I do have I make no use of. I am aware instantly and almost obsessively of anything fragile, with the thought that I must and will break it. This has been true of me my whole life.’” As for Della, perhaps this is her at her most believable: ”’Sometimes I shut myself in my room and throw myself down on my bed and I just let it run through me. All that wrath. In every bone of my body. Then it seems to wear itself out and I can go for a walk or something. But it never goes away.’” The love of a good (Black) woman for a bad (white) man? Redemption through love, where the redeemer is the young Black woman giving up her comfortable life as she has known it for an irresponsible white man? This portrait of the saint-like Della trying to redeem Jack feels almost offensive to me. As Della tells Jack, ”’I think most people feel a difference between their real lives and the lives they have in the world. But they ignore their souls, or hide them, so they can keep things together, keep an ordinary life together. You don’t do that. In your own way, you’re kind of—pure.’”

If not for my agreement with NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux that generously provided me with an e-copy ARC in exchange for a review, I would forego attaching a star rating. Marilynne Robinson remains a wonderful novelist based on her initial four novels, but Jack feels like a disappointing departure. 4 stars for any author other than Marilynne Robinson, but 3.5 compared to her wonderful earlier novels.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Those who can’t hope can still wish.

I regret to say that I was disappointed in this fourth installment of the Gilead series. It never reached the depths of the first three for me. I so loved Jack Boughton from Gilead and Home, but this Jack did not seem, somehow, like quite the same person to me.

Robinson is dealing with a complex issue, that of interracial love and marriage in the Jim Crow South, a rather huge undertaking. There is much she gets right, and yet there is something she does not and I cannot exactly put my finger on it.

One thing that I felt was wrong was the constant, relentless self-deprecation that Jack indulges in, and his repeated promises to bow out of Della’s life and then his swinging back in again. It became absolutely tiring for me, like listening to a song set to replay again and again. I marveled at Della’s lack of fear and the ease with which she sacrificed her position for a man who offered so little in the way of even consistency.

There is also no resolution at the end of the novel. We are not told what happens that sends him back to Gilead or what happens to him and Della after he returns from his visit. All of that lies before us at the end of this book, and I found it hard to imagine how this family was meant to survive and where they could possibly go. If even half of what Jack believes about himself is true, they are doomed. I felt nothing but sadness for them, as I do not think love can survive with so little to feed it. I had no sense of resolution and I wondered why I had spent so many hours with these characters to end up basically where I had begun.

I will keep the Jack Boughton of Home in my heart and, no doubt, let this Jack go rather quickly. Robinson knew exactly who the first Jack was, and presented him to me complete and undeniable. I’m not sure she ever connected with this Jack; I know I did not.