Home by Marilynne Robinson

My reaction to this novel falls in between the deep and abiding love I have for Housekeeping, Robinson's first novel, and the admiration I have for Gilead, her second. I was truly attached to the main characters of Home, who appear on the periphery in Gilead (in a nice touch the central characters of Gilead appear on the periphery here), but one of the most noticeable qualities of the novel is how dialogue-heavy it is. These aren't characters who do; they are characters who talk. But what I really want to point out is the crying. I am constantly drying the tears that flow in my students' stories. Now obviously I know people cry and therefore fictional characters should cry, but you wouldn't believe the weight of these tears--they are constantly soaking garments, dripping to the floor, leaving salty trails everywhere. And generally it's not a bad sign that my students write so much sobbing--it means the characters are in high stakes emotional situations which typically are good for fiction. It's just that it's practically impossible to describe crying in a way that doesn't sound cliched, melodramatic or sentimental. One of my favorite moments in Ishiguro's novel The Remains of the Day, which is about an emotionally repressed butler, is when someone has to tell the butler that he's crying. He's so out of touch with his own emotions that he hasn't noticed his own tears. So his crying is revealed via the dialogue of another character. And this is exactly what Robinson does. Glory, the protagonist of the novel, is a cry-er. Mostly because her brother Jack--the prodigal son returned--drives her to it with his sad past, his lost love, his alcoholism and his general despair. But somewhat weirdly--though interestingly--Robinson never says, Glory cried. Certainly there are no salty trails. Instead she has Jack tell us via his, "There you go again," or "Are you crying" or "You're crying;" and even though I admit I found this pattern a little distracting, it does serve the function of making Glory's tears a burden to Jack rather than a burden to Glory. Glory doesn't mind that she's crying--she can't help it--but Jack certainly feels that he's the one making it happen. Sometimes he teases her, sometimes he feels guilty, but always, the reader is reminded, the problem is Jack and the tears ostensibly belong to him.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

It's well documented that I am a huge fan of Robinson's other novel Housekeeping so I can't really explain why it took me so long to get around to Gilead. But a dollar copy at the Delray Beach Public Library finally drew me in, and the novel is all that reviewers have said: lovely, significant, deeply spiritual and meditative. For once, the jacket copy did not seem excessive in the least. But what interested me most about the novel (which is in the form of a journal that an eldery minister keeps for his very young son to read in the future) is how it pairs up with Housekeeping. It does not have the big plot that H has (it's a masterful example of how withholding the smallest mystery can keep a reader turning pages as long as the sentences and ideas are good) but it is very much a companion piece. H. traces the line of women in a family and how they shape each other, Gilead does the same for a line of men. H. is the story of a daughter who lost her mother as a child, G. is the story of a father who knows his son will lose him very soon. H. is about a daughter who seems to find a spiritual quality in the world and G. is about a father who wants to instill that spirituality in his son from beyond the grave. Anyway, it's interesting to see how Robinson has written two novels that are both grounded in her own worldview but that bookend each other without ever feeling like one is repeating the other. I hope that she'll write a third novel without waiting 24 years in between, but if she doesn't her oeuvre is still remarkably deep.

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

I have what can only be described as an expanding love in my heart for this novel. I really liked it the first time I read it, then I read it again last summer to use in a graduate workshop last fall, then I read it again this summer to use in my undergrad women in literature course, and it is so rich with imagery and language (not to mention a decent plot and really likeable--no, loveable-- characters) that I feel like I could read it every six months and love it even more each time for a different reason. I used to think the opening was slow but now I relish the measured pace, the dark imagery, and the insane quantity of information that Ruth, the first person narrator could never know. It used to drive my mother crazy that I would reread certain books over and over, (I knew they would be good, which you can't know about something you haven't read!) but in retrospect that practice may have been good training for me as a reader. I learned to pick up on small details in second (third, tenth, whatever) readings, and that way learned how those small details can be key to understanding subtext and tone. Not that Harriet the Spy had an enormous amount of subtext, but certainly annual summer readings of Lord of the Rings showed me something new each time.

My point is that when reading as a writer, rereading can be especially useful because only when you know the end can you see all the work the writer was laying down to get you to that end. Being an obsessive reader of certain authors may not be such a bad idea either.

I will add though that reading Housekeeping briefly paralyzed my writing because it seems unapproachably good and if the world has Marilynne Robinson writing novels (albeit only one every ten years) maybe it doesn't need me writing novels, but after awhile I got over that. Besides I like having something to shoot for--a reason to keep practicing in the hope of writing a book that good. But then I also recommend having a not-so-great novel around too so that you can say, at least I can do better than that. (it probably says something sad about me that I'm not kidding).