Jack

Book Cover
Average Rating
Series
Gilead novels volume 4
Publisher
Varies, see individual formats and editions
Publication Date
2020.
Language
English
Appears on list

Description

A New York Times bestsellerNamed a Best Book of 2020 by the Australian Book Review, AV Club, Books-a-Million, Electric Literature, Esquire, the Financial Times, Good Housekeeping (UK), The Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, Literary Hub, the New Statesman, the New York Public Library, NPR, the Star Tribune, and TIMEMarilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, returns to the world of Gilead with Jack, the latest novel in one of the great works of contemporary American fictionMarilynne Robinson’s mythical world of Gilead, Iowa—the setting of her novels Gilead, Home, and Lila, and now Jack—and its beloved characters have illuminated and interrogated the complexities of American history, the power of our emotions, and the wonders of a sacred world. Jack is Robinson’s fourth novel in this now-classic series. In it, Robinson tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the prodigal son of Gilead’s Presbyterian minister, and his romance with Della Miles, a high school teacher who is also the child of a preacher. Their deeply felt, tormented, star-crossed interracial romance resonates with all the paradoxes of American life, then and now. Robinson’s Gilead novels, which have won one Pulitzer Prize and two National Book Critics Circle Awards, are a vital contribution to contemporary American literature and a revelation of our national character and humanity.

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ISBN
9780374279301
9781432883362
9781250257222
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Also in this Series

  • Gilead (Gilead novels Volume 1) Cover
  • Home (Gilead novels Volume 2) Cover
  • Lila (Gilead novels Volume 3) Cover
  • Jack (Gilead novels Volume 4) Cover

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Similar Series From Novelist

NoveList provides detailed suggestions for series you might like if you enjoyed this book. Suggestions are based on recommendations from librarians and other contributors.
These family sagas follow the lives of family members -- of a patriarch in the U.S. Midwest (Gilead novels) and a matriarch in Ireland (Hamilton Saga). Both gentle-reads series offer character-driven storylines and historical backdrops. -- Andrienne Cruz
These lyrical historical fiction series set in Montana (Morrie Morgan) and Iowa (Gilead) chronicle the lives of a robust cast of complex characters saddled by secrets who nevertheless persevere. Both leisurely paced and gentle reads feature intriguing historical elements. -- Andrienne Cruz
Both character-driven, multigenerational series follow the families of an innkeeper in Oregon (Inn at Shining Waters) and a religious minister in Iowa (Gilead novels). Moving and reflective, these gentle reads feature emotional family dynamics compounded by religious and racial tension. -- Andrienne Cruz
These series have the appeal factors reflective, moving, and lyrical, and they have the genres "literary fiction" and "historical fiction"; the subject "clergy"; and characters that are "complex characters."
These series have the appeal factors reflective, moving, and lyrical, and they have the genres "literary fiction" and "gentle reads."
These series have the appeal factors reflective, moving, and lyrical, and they have the genres "literary fiction" and "psychological fiction"; and characters that are "complex characters."
These series have the appeal factors reflective, melancholy, and lyrical, and they have the genre "literary fiction"; and characters that are "complex characters."
These series have the appeal factors reflective, moving, and lyrical, and they have the genres "literary fiction" and "historical fiction."
These series have the appeal factors stylistically complex, character-driven, and leisurely paced, and they have the genre "literary fiction."

Similar Titles From NoveList

NoveList provides detailed suggestions for titles you might like if you enjoyed this book. Suggestions are based on recommendations from librarians and other contributors.
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NoveList recommends "Morrie Morgan novels (Ivan Doig)" for fans of "Gilead novels". Check out the first book in the series.
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Robinson's and Haruf's literary, psychologically focused novels compassionately portray interactions among their characters while believably illuminating their inner lives; along with the internal landscapes, their writing evokes a strong sense of place. -- Katherine Johnson
Though Anita Diamant's protagonists are mostly Jewish and Marilynne Robinson's books focus on Christianity, both write reflective, character-driven stories that view relationships and struggles through a spiritual lens. -- Stephen Ashley
These literary authors' exquisite prose style vividly depicts external surroundings while delving into their characters' psyches. Banville's tales tend to be more haunting, even disturbing, than Robinson's, but both approach darker aspects of human nature with realism. -- Katherine Johnson
Both these authors write both fiction and nonfiction in which they explore social and metaphysical questions using sophisticated but straightforward language. Orhan Pamuk is a skeptic while Marilynne Robinson is a believing Christian, but both display a humane approach as they examine good and bad in human nature. -- Katherine Johnson
The fiction of Elizabeth Strout and Marilynne Robinson lyrically portrays the intimate thoughts of characters who have complex, often difficult lives within settings that feature small communities and carefully drawn, three-dimensional figures; both offer absorbing reading. -- Katherine Johnson
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Published Reviews

Booklist Review

Jack Boughton has been present, even when he was painfully absent, throughout Robinson's profound saga--Gilead (2004), Home (2008), and Lila (2014)--and now he steps forward to illuminate the hidden facets of his peripatetic life of lies, thievery, bad luck, and dangerous love. Robinson's latest glorious work of metaphysical and moral inquiry, nuanced feelings, intricate imagination, and exquisite sensuousness begins at night inside the locked gates of a St. Louis cemetery where Jack, an alcoholic, sarcastic, and self-loathing white man living rough, encounters the woman he loves, Della Miles, who is a disciplined, poetry-loving, Black, and a devoted high school history teacher. Both are the conflicted children of preachers. Their conversation in the mortuary dark is sparring, existential, and frank, despairing and elated, a high-stakes variation on the courtship-through-conversation in Lila between Reverend Ames and the young stranger who becomes his second wife. But no such happy ending awaits Jack and Della: marriage between their races is not only scandalous but illegal. Jack tries to get right, while Della, a pillar of strength, integrity, and love, contends with her enraged family. Myriad manifestations of pain are evoked, but here, too, are beauty, humor, mystery, and joy as Robinson holds us rapt with the exactitude of her perceptions and the exhilaration of her hymnal cadence, and so gracefully elucidates the complex sorrows and wonders of life and spirit.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The newest, avidly awaited novel in National Humanities Medal winner Robinson's acclaimed Gilead saga grapples with urgent questions of race, faith, and equality.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
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Publisher's Weekly Review

Robinson's stellar, revelatory fourth entry in her Gilead cycle (after Lila) focuses on Jack Boughton, the prodigal son of a Gilead, Iowa, minister, and the beginnings of his romance with Della Miles before his 1957 return to Gilead in Home. Jack, who disparagingly styles himself "the Prince of Darkness," finds his life spiraling out of control in St. Louis, where, after dodging the draft during WWII, he spends several years increasingly prone to bouts of heavy drinking, petty theft, and vagrancy. His tailspin is interrupted when he meets Della Miles, an English teacher from a prominent Black family in Memphis. Despite a disastrous first date, the details of which are hinted at in the beginning, and over the numerous objections of Della's family and white strangers, Jack and Della fall in love, bound by a natural intimacy and mutual love of poetry. Robinson's masterly prose and musings on faith are on display as usual, and the dialogue is keen and indelible. ("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," Della tells Jack.) This is a beautiful, superbly crafted meditation on the redemption and transcendence that love affords. (Sept.)

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Library Journal Review

This new work is a prequel to Robinson's Pulitzer-winning Gilead, but one needn't have read the previous novel to appreciate or enjoy it. It follows Jack Boughton, a white drifter, occasional thief, and alcoholic, and his romance with Della Miles, a respectable Black schoolteacher. Although their circumstances (not to mention the law) should keep them apart in St. Louis before the civil rights era, they are drawn to each other based on their shared experience as "preacher's kids" and their love of poetry. After a brief prolog, the novel opens with a lengthy account of a night the two spend in a cemetery talking about life and faith. This helps the reader recognize Jack and Della as soulmates before fully understanding the circumstances of their acquaintance or knowing the extent of Jack's past misdeeds. Against Jack's better judgment and despite considerable pressure from Della's family and a Baptist minister he befriends, Jack is unable to remove himself from Della's life, and her unwavering faith in him leads to a kind of redemption. VERDICT Robinson fans will be hungry for the next chapter in the Gilead saga, and the beauty and humanity of Robinson's prose will win over new fans. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 2/24/20.]--Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis

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Kirkus Book Review

A sometimes tender, sometimes fraught story of interracial love in a time of trouble. "I have never heard of a white man who got so little good out of being a white man." So chides Della Miles, upbraiding John Ames Boughton at the opening of Robinson's latest novel, set in an unspecified time, though certainly one of legal racial segregation. Jack hails from Gilead, Iowa, where so many of Robinson's stories are set, and he has a grave waiting there that he seems in a headlong rush to occupy. He drinks, he steals, he wanders, he's a vagrant. Now he's in the black part of St. Louis, an object of suspicion and concern, known locally as "That White Man That Keeps Walking Up and Down the Street All the Time." Della is a schoolteacher, at home in Shakespeare and the classics. Jack is inclined to Milton. He is Presbyterian by birth, she Methodist and pious--but not so much that she can't laugh when he calls himself the Prince of Darkness. Both are the children of ministers, both smart and self-aware, happy to argue about poetry and predestination in a whites-only graveyard. The arguments continue, both playful and serious, as their love grows and as Jack tries his hand at the workaday world, wearing a tie and working a till--and, more important, not drinking. Pledged to each other like Romeo and Juliet, they suffer being parted more than they do having to deal with the disapproval of others, whether white or black, though Della's father, aunt, brothers, and sister all separately tell Jack to leave her alone, and once, when Jack's landlady finds out that Della is black, she demands that he leave. The reader will by this time doubtless be pulling for them, though also wondering how the proper Della puts up with the definitively scruffy Jack, even if it's clear that they love each other without reservation. Robinson's storytelling relies heavily on dialogue, moreso than her other work, and involves only a few scene changes, as if first sketched out as a play. The story flows swiftly--and without a hint of inevitability--as Robinson explores a favorite theme, "guilt and grace met together." An elegantly written proof of the thesis that love conquers all--but not without considerable pain. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* Jack Boughton has been present, even when he was painfully absent, throughout Robinson's profound saga—Gilead (2004), Home (2008), and Lila (2014)—and now he steps forward to illuminate the hidden facets of his peripatetic life of lies, thievery, bad luck, and dangerous love. Robinson's latest glorious work of metaphysical and moral inquiry, nuanced feelings, intricate imagination, and exquisite sensuousness begins at night inside the locked gates of a St. Louis cemetery where Jack, an alcoholic, sarcastic, and self-loathing white man living rough, encounters the woman he loves, Della Miles, who is a disciplined, poetry-loving, Black, and a devoted high school history teacher. Both are the conflicted children of preachers. Their conversation in the mortuary dark is sparring, existential, and frank, despairing and elated, a high-stakes variation on the courtship-through-conversation in Lila between Reverend Ames and the young stranger who becomes his second wife. But no such happy ending awaits Jack and Della: marriage between their races is not only scandalous but illegal. Jack tries to get right, while Della, a pillar of strength, integrity, and love, contends with her enraged family. Myriad manifestations of pain are evoked, but here, too, are beauty, humor, mystery, and joy as Robinson holds us rapt with the exactitude of her perceptions and the exhilaration of her hymnal cadence, and so gracefully elucidates the complex sorrows and wonders of life and spirit.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The newest, avidly awaited novel in National Humanities Medal winner Robinson's acclaimed Gilead saga grapples with urgent questions of race, faith, and equality. Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.

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Library Journal Reviews

It's time to say good-bye to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Robinson's beloved Gilead novels with the story of John Ames Boughton, the wayward son of a Presbyterian minister in Gilead. In segregated post-World War II St. Louis, Jack falls for Della Miles, an African American high school teacher and preacher's daughter—and their relationship sums up the ongoing stresses of race relationships in post-Emancipation America. With a 250,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2020 Library Journal.

Copyright 2020 Library Journal.
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Library Journal Reviews

This new work is a prequel to Robinson's Pulitzer-winning Gilead, but one needn't have read the previous novel to appreciate or enjoy it. It follows Jack Boughton, a white drifter, occasional thief, and alcoholic, and his romance with Della Miles, a respectable Black schoolteacher. Although their circumstances (not to mention the law) should keep them apart in St. Louis before the civil rights era, they are drawn to each other based on their shared experience as "preacher's kids" and their love of poetry. After a brief prolog, the novel opens with a lengthy account of a night the two spend in a cemetery talking about life and faith. This helps the reader recognize Jack and Della as soulmates before fully understanding the circumstances of their acquaintance or knowing the extent of Jack's past misdeeds. Against Jack's better judgment and despite considerable pressure from Della's family and a Baptist minister he befriends, Jack is unable to remove himself from Della's life, and her unwavering faith in him leads to a kind of redemption. VERDICT Robinson fans will be hungry for the next chapter in the Gilead saga, and the beauty and humanity of Robinson's prose will win over new fans. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 2/24/20.]—Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis

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Copyright 2020 Library Journal.
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Publishers Weekly Reviews

Robinson's stellar, revelatory fourth entry in her Gilead cycle (after Lila) focuses on Jack Boughton, the prodigal son of a Gilead, Iowa, minister, and the beginnings of his romance with Della Miles before his 1957 return to Gilead in Home. Jack, who disparagingly styles himself "the Prince of Darkness," finds his life spiraling out of control in St. Louis, where, after dodging the draft during WWII, he spends several years increasingly prone to bouts of heavy drinking, petty theft, and vagrancy. His tailspin is interrupted when he meets Della Miles, an English teacher from a prominent Black family in Memphis. Despite a disastrous first date, the details of which are hinted at in the beginning, and over the numerous objections of Della's family and white strangers, Jack and Della fall in love, bound by a natural intimacy and mutual love of poetry. Robinson's masterly prose and musings on faith are on display as usual, and the dialogue is keen and indelible. ("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," Della tells Jack.) This is a beautiful, superbly crafted meditation on the redemption and transcendence that love affords. (Sept.)

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