Jack: An Oprah's Book Club Pick

Product Description '[Her work] defines universal truths about what it means to be human' Barack Obama'Marilynne Robinson is one of the greatest writers of our time' Sunday Times 'Jack is the fourth in Robinson's luminous, profound Gilead series and perhaps the best yet' Observer Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the American National Humanities Medal, returns to the world of Gilead with Jack, the final in one of the great works of contemporary American fiction.Jack tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the loved and grieved-over prodigal son of a Presbyterian minister in Gilead, Iowa, a drunkard and a ne'er-do-well. In segregated St. Louis sometime after World War II, Jack falls in love with Della Miles, an African-American high school teacher, also a preacher's child, with a discriminating mind, a generous spirit and an independent will. Their fraught, beautiful story is one of Robinson's greatest achievements. Review Radiant and visionary, the fourth Gilead novel explores whether a minister's prodigal son can be redeemed by love . . . [Marilynne Robinson is] a writer of magisterial wisdom and skill . . . This has been Robinson's project: to perceive "this teeming world", as she puts it, "so steeped in its sins", and all the same to insist on what is best and loveliest -- Sarah Perry ― Guardian Marilynne Robinson is one of the greatest writers of our time. In 2008 I concluded my article: "I'm not saying that you're actually dead if you haven't read Marilynne Robinson, but I honestly couldn't say you're fully alive." I have not changed my mind -- Bryan Appleyard ― Sunday Times The fourth in Robinson's luminous, profound Gilead series and perhaps the best yet, a sad story about love, race and midwestern mores ― Observer Each of [Robinson's] novels has celebrated the fact that the ineffable is inseparable from the quotidian, and rendered the ineffable, quotidian world back to us, peculiar, luminous and precise . . . There are passages when Jack's eye glimmers so clearly on the moment, when his dream logic feels so apt, that the whole world Robinson has illuminated with such care and attention reappears, and we are returned to the prophetic everyday -- Jordan Kisner ― Atlantic Marilynne Robinson's novel has some of the beats of a romantic comedy. The principals are charismatic, their conversation sparky. Jack can be read as a stand-alone, but the book gains much from what many readers will bring to it of their knowledge of its central character from his appearances in the trilogy of novels that preceded this one. Every time Robinson tells this story, it is both a better story and truer -- Dr Nikhil Krishnan ― Telegraph If your soul isn't stirred by a novel about Jack, chances are you haven't signed up to the doctrine of Marilynne Robinson, one of America's defining writers . . . Robinson's writing is numinous but never alienating to secular readers, because the issues she tackles are universal, with complicated parent-child dynamics a favourite -- Susie Mesure ― The i It could be said that the attempt to understand how things are is at the heart of Robinson's remarkable body of work. Jack fits beautifully into the subtle weave of Robinson's Gilead books; that said, it could perfectly well be read on its own -- Erica Wagner ― Financial Times It is an immensely satisfying and bittersweet end to an astonishing series. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about these four books taken as a whole is the whole-hearted commitment to the novel as a moral endeavour. They are beautiful, and they are true -- Stuart Kelly ― Scotsman This is a sunnier book than anyone might have expected, an unlikely love story, both funny and sublime: we see two souls awakening to love in that down-to-earth yet transcendent vein that is Robinson's special hallmark -- Nonnie Minogue ― Literary Review In Gilead, the first volume, the Rev. John Ames writes that 'a good sermon is one side of a passionate conversation,' and Ms