Home Oprahs Book Club, Marilynne Robinson
Home Oprahs Book Club, Marilynne Robinson
1 Rating(s)
List: $26.99 | Sale: $18.89
Club: $13.49

Home (Oprah's Book Club)
A Novel

Author: Marilynne Robinson

Narrator: Maggi-Meg Reed

Unabridged: 12 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/02/2008


Synopsis

Hundreds of thousands were enthralled by the luminous voice of John Ames in Gilead, Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Home is an entirely independent, deeply affecting novel that takes place concurrently in the same locale, this time in the household of Reverend Robert Boughton, Ames's closest friend.

Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack--the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years--comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain.

Jack is one of the great characters in recent literature. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold a job, he is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Boughton's most beloved child. Brilliant, lovable, and wayward, Jack forges an intense bond with Glory and engages painfully with Ames, his godfather and namesake.

Home is a moving and healing book about families, family secrets, and the passing of the generations, about love and death and faith. It is Robinson's greatest work, an unforgettable embodiment of the deepest and most universal emotions.

About Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson is the author of Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Home (2008), winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Lila (2014), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Jack (2020), a New York Times bestseller. Her first novel, Housekeeping (1980), won the PEN/Hemingway Award. Robinson’s nonfiction books include The Givenness of Things (2015), When I Was a Child I Read Books (2012), Absence of Mind (2010), The Death of Adam (1998), and Mother Country (1989). She is the recipient of a 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, for “her grace and intelligence in writing.” Robinson lives in California

About Maggi-Meg Reed

Maggi-Meg Reed is the narrator of numerous popular audiobooks including Alex Kava's One False Move, Sebastien Japrisot's A Very Long Engagement, and Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife.  Reed is a multiple Audie nominee, Earphones winner, and AudioFile Featured Narrator.   In 2008, she was named the Best Voice in Fiction & Classics by AudioFile magazine.  Her voice can also be heard on television and radio commercials across the country, and AudioFile Magazine has called her narration"fresh, intelligent, and attentive".  She lives in Brooklyn, NY.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jim on April 24, 2023

A well-respected retired Presbyterian minister is old and in ill health in a small town in Iowa. He’s a widower with eight children - four boys, four girls. He ran a tight religious ship at home: regular church attendance, grace at every meal, no swearing, etc. Six of the kids ‘did well.’ They marri......more

Goodreads review by Benjamin on January 08, 2010

I don't think I have ever read a novel that so accurately describes the thoughts and actions and motivations of human beings. There was not one false note in this entire book. People acted in this book how they actually do in real life (at least in my experience). Their feelings of love and anger an......more

Goodreads review by Dave on March 10, 2024

It was an interesting experience for me to read this book, since I have by now not been a member of a church since I was 28 and I am now near 63. Agnostic is how I identify my “religious faith” on Facebook. Depending on whom it is I talk with, I can teeter in different directions. The church I was r......more

Goodreads review by Angela M on December 16, 2018

4.5 stars If you’ve read Gilead or Lila the characters will be familiar, but yet the story is told from a different perspective. The focus of this story is on Jack Boughton, the wayward son of retired minister, the aging Robert Boughton. Jack returns home to Gilead, seeking an understanding of himse......more

Goodreads review by William2 on January 04, 2022

This is the story of a Christian family and how it negotiates the slow fade of its patriarch, the Reverend Robert Boughton. Add to that the recent jilting of daughter Glory who has suffered humiliations from a married man. And the life gone wrong of son Jack, a troublemaker and petty thief since boy......more


Quotes

“The gifted Maggi-Meg Reed captures the world-weary tone of the characters as life ebbs from the failing but still faithful Robert. Reed shines brightest as Glory, the daughter who comes home to care for her father. Almost as affecting is Reed's portrayal of Jack, the beat-down preacher's kid who has fallen from grace.” —AudioFile magazine, Winner of an Earphones Award

“Robinson's style is old-fashioned… Maggi-Meg Reed is perfectly amenable, retreating into the audio attic and retrieving some of the creakier techniques… In writing of clergymen and faith, Robinson's prose is near-biblical; Reed's voice conveys a similar depth of feeling and simplicity of expression.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“In the cacophony of the 21st century, listening to Marilynne Robinson's Home is a nearly peaceful oasis... Maggi-Meg Reed's narration of the story is pitch-perfect... Home is an extraordinary meditation on just what the title implies.” —Sarasota Herald-Tribune

“[Maggi-Meg Reed] did a wonderful job narrating... I enjoyed each of the 12 hours that I listened to the book.” —5 Minutes for Books

“Her character is one of the proofs of Robinson's immense literary talent, aided immeasurably by the reassuring tones of narrator Maggi-Meg Reed.” —Winston Salem Journal

Gilead is a beautiful work--demanding, grave and lucid . . . Robinson's words have a spiritual force that's very rare in contemporary fiction.” —James Wood, The New York Times Book Review on Gilead


Awards

  • National Book Awards - Finalist
  • The New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year
  • AudioFile Best Voices
  • Washington Post Best Books of the Year
  • iTunes Best Audiobooks
  • L.A. Times Book Prize - Winner
  • Amazon.com Top 10 Editor's Picks: Audiobooks
  • Publishers Weekly Listen Up Awards: Best in Category
  • Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction - Nominee
  • Kansas City Star Top Books of the Year
  • Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year
  • AudioFile Best Audiobooks