Book Review: Home

I should have watched There Will Be Blood before reading Home. But I had no idea one of those would have affected the other, so why would it have stopped me? But the only thing I didn't like about There Will Be Blood was accomplished in spectacularly understated fashion by Home.

Maybe I should explain that.

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There Will Be Blood was really a great movie, but, like Citizen Kane, it was focused on just one man and his love of power. Even the second (or third if you count the kid)-most important character, the preacher in the town, is not really explained or given true motivation. Especially in the final scene of that movie, I felt that the preacher, for all the great performance given, was just a prop (and if you doubt that, consider the depiction of the preacher's flock -- they're definitely props).

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That's just par for the course. I assume Paul Thomas Anderson (writer and director of the movie) wasn't interested in religion as more than a plot point, so he had no real insight into the religious characters. I guess that's OK -- he nailed the central character, and that's the point of the movie.

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But as I watched that movie, I was in the middle of reading Home by Marilynne Robinson, which is primarily about preachers and their families in mid-century Iowa. And the depth and texture she brings to each of the characters -- the old widower ex-preacher, his youngest daughter, and the prodigal older brother who returns home -- is so amazing that it rubbed off on what I expected from what was billed as one of the "movies of the year." So thanks a lot, Marilynne Robinson, you set the bar so high with your characters I may never be able to enjoy a poor characterization again.

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Home is the sequel of sorts to Gilead, Robinson's earlier book that won the Pulitzer prize. Gilead focuses on one preacher's family and Home on the other (the two preachers are best friends as well). The stories overlap but are not necessary to each other. Still, the different perspectives when combined give a sort of third dimension to the tale. You understand that the things one character does to deeply hurt another are not intended that way, not quite, at least.

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Robinson's books are about the people in them. There's not much interaction with the world at large, and their world seems a bit distant from ours. Which makes it all the more amazing when their inner lives and struggles speak so clearly and well to us 21st-century folks. When you step back, not that much goes on in the course of the book, but it's so richly and lovingly detailed that you realize just how wonderful this ordinary stuff is.

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It's not a fast read but it's a very, very good one. Hopefully this one will win some prizes as well.