Who says you can't go home again? Not Marilynne Robinson, whose third novel, Home, debuts this September. Home revisits the fictional town of Gilead, Iowa, which Robinson first introduced to readers in 2004 in the subdued but powerful--and pulitzer-prize-winning, I might add--novel of the same name. There we met the elderly and ailing Reverend John Ames, his young wife, and his seven-year-old son, to whom Ames is writing a very special letter: a quiet meditation on his life and beliefs, a legacy of words to leave to his boy after Ames dies. In Home, the year is 1956 and Ames is writing his letter, but Robinson shifts the perspective from him to the family of his lifelong friend, Reverend Robert Boughton, focusing on Boughton's shiftless, ne'er-do-well son Jack. But don't call Home a sequel--Robinson doesn't believe in writing sequels: "A novel has its shape and that's that," she said in a recent interview with Publishers Weekly. If only other authors were as wise.Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Pulitzer-Prize Winning Author Returns to Gilead
Who says you can't go home again? Not Marilynne Robinson, whose third novel, Home, debuts this September. Home revisits the fictional town of Gilead, Iowa, which Robinson first introduced to readers in 2004 in the subdued but powerful--and pulitzer-prize-winning, I might add--novel of the same name. There we met the elderly and ailing Reverend John Ames, his young wife, and his seven-year-old son, to whom Ames is writing a very special letter: a quiet meditation on his life and beliefs, a legacy of words to leave to his boy after Ames dies. In Home, the year is 1956 and Ames is writing his letter, but Robinson shifts the perspective from him to the family of his lifelong friend, Reverend Robert Boughton, focusing on Boughton's shiftless, ne'er-do-well son Jack. But don't call Home a sequel--Robinson doesn't believe in writing sequels: "A novel has its shape and that's that," she said in a recent interview with Publishers Weekly. If only other authors were as wise.
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1 comment:
I'm excited to get this one :).
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