Jack

[Jack] is the fourth book in Robinson's series about characters from the fictional town of Gilead, Iowa. This novel explores the prodigal son, Jack, whose behavior was such a source of drama and gossip and grief in the other books. Jack, who is white, is basically homeless, an alcoholic, has had a

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stint in prison, and then meets a young Black woman who he falls in love with. Like Jack, Della is also the daughter of a minister and is living on her own in St. Louis as a teacher.

Their relationship is unlikely to me, and I had a hard time figuring out why they would have been attracted to each other, especially on Della's end. This is the 1950s, so there is really no way they can be together as a mixed-race couple. Jack is depressed, poor, and drinking too much. Yes, he is intelligent and kind but I can't imagine Della even discovering that beneath his poor, sad exterior.

Robinson's writing is, as always, beautiful and observant. Her writing is subtle and complex. So I did love this book, but I didn't like it quite as much as her other novels. I think Jack's story works better as a catalyst for conversations and character reactions in her other novels. When explored on its own, I thought Jack wasn't quite as interesting of a character as I found him when he was more mysterious and distant in the other novels.

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”Well, if things go wrong for you--the slide into haplessness can be quick. You can find yourself looking at the world from the wrong side before you know what's happened. I think people look at me and they see that. They call me preacher and so on. Professor. It usually means they want to give

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me a little trouble. I bother them, because they don't think I'm the sort that ends up like this. I know there might be more to it. Of course there is. I'm just saying it can happen. It's nothing you should be anywhere near. Take my word for it.”

Jack is the fourth of Marilynne Robinson’s novels set in and/or featuring characters from the fictional town of Gilead, Iowa. Each novel overlaps the others in interesting ways, either by describing events from a different perspective or telling a story that occurred “off stage” in another novel. Readers first met the eponymous Jack in Home, where he returns to Gilead after a more than 20-year separation from his father and siblings. We know he's a bit of a ne'er do well, but much goes unsaid.

Jack gives us the backstory of a man who left home after doing someone wrong, and fell into further trouble both with alcohol and the law. He also met Della, a remarkable woman who sees the good in Jack. But Della is black, Jack is white, and in the mid-20th century it was illegal to marry. Even spending time together caused trouble, but they found ways to do so. Their relationship developed despite Jack frequently showing up late, drunk, or both, and despite strong pressure from Della’s family. And while Della initially comes across as the more rational side of the relationship, it's Jack who sees the long-term effects of staying together and struggles with the possibility of doing greater harm to the woman he loves simply by remaining with her. Jack also cannot escape being both son and godson of preachers, which shaped his world view. There are times when the church comes to his aid, but it also lets him down.

Marilynne Robinson’s prose is exquisite, both in giving readers a fully-formed Jack, and in depicting his turmoil. I hope there are more novels ahead. Perhaps one about Della?

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I read Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead when it came out in 2004. A few years later I read it again with a church book club, and four years again I read it a third time for a book club.

It is a gorgeous,profound novel written as a letter by an elderly preacher to his young son. The narrator, John

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Ames, is conflicted about his best friend's ne'er-do-well son, Jack. Jack has returned to Gilead to visit his ailing father. His presence is a torment to John Ames who fears his young wife will be drawn to Jack. Jack left town after impregnating a girl, his abandonment of the child causing a rift. When Jack finally tells John Ames he has a colored wife and child, he gives Jack the blessing of forgiveness he has long sought.
Robinson has revisited Gilead in Home and Lila, and now in a fourth volume, Jack. I could not resist reading Jack's story.

The novel begins shortly after Jack is released from prison. He has been a bum, a drunk, homeless. There is still an air about him of respectability, learned from being the son of a Presbyterian minister. People call him Professor. They appreciate his playing hymns on the piano.

Jack is in a black suit when he assists a young colored teacher who has dropped her papers in the rain, and she believes him to be a minister and invites him into her home. From this a relationship begins, one that is not only socially unacceptable but against the law.

Jack is profoundly aware of his sinfulness. His birth nearly killed his mother. His boyish antics, unrelenting unbelief, and teenage wildness embarrassed his preacher father. The final straw was impregnating a young woman and not taking responsibility for their child who later dies. His legacy of harming those around him weighs heavily.

This young woman who treats him so respectfully draws him. He has lied to her by not correcting her mistake; already his harm has begun. But Jack can't forget her.

Jack and Della meet again and talk poetry and more. He is falling in love. The daughter of a minister, Della is a college educated teacher, and has a respectable family who loves her. They can have no future in this world.

Jack feels shame and dread and grief. Just by existing he is destroying Della's career and alienating her from her family. Her freedom and even her life is in peril if they are caught. Jack calls himself the Prince of Darkness. His "battered, atheist soul" has regrets, but he cannot repent. He jokes that he has lived a life of 'prevenient death,' a play on prevenient grace which believes all can grasp the grace already offered.

Jack isn't preying on Della. She has pursued him. Like God, she can look beyond the outer appearance and the social appraisement to the inner man. She sees his soul.

Jack has stolen the grandest thing by far--he has stolen Della. Yet a wise man has told him that if God puts some happiness in your way, you should take it. Even the greatest sinner can find a moment of grace.

Jack is one of the great characters in literature, a portrait of a sinner who struggles with his unbelief and the wreckage he has brought. His love story goes to the heart of America's original sin, slavery and segregation that treated people of color as less than human.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

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3.5. When one opens this book one expects , because after all this is Marilynne Robinson, some pretty fantastic prose. This is what I found, the writing was beautiful. So why then did this not appeal to me as much as Gilead or even Lila? Can I bake it in Covid? Possibly, but this is a very

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introspective novel, and as such it was, for the most part, one sided. Jack's story and his thoughts, fears about his relationship with Della, rather repetitive as he goes back and forth, again and again. This is the fifties and mixed relationships we not looked in with favor, could be outright dangerous. So definitely a timely book.

I never though got a good sense of Della. Why would she sacrifice so much to be with Jack? He is definitely a man with a past, not a sterling character by any means. This was my problem with the book, why I couldn't rate it higher. It felt too one sided, lacked enough for me to understand their love story. Would it had been different had I read Home, which is the story that includes Jack? Possibly, since this was a read with Angela and Esil and Angela, who did read it, rated it much higher.

A book to sink into for the gorgeous writing, but not one that called to me when I put it down.

ARC from Edelweiss.

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I so enjoyed Gilead, and I was looking forward to reading about Jack. He has been mentioned in previous books in the series. Unfortunately, this book fell flat for me. Jack always seemed so doomed. I thought that his bi-racial marriage might breathe some life into the story, but it didn’t. Della,

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defying her family should have had more spark, more personality. And I still haven’t figured out why Della was locked into a cemetery for white people at night, where Jack and she spent the night talking. I got bogged down in this cemetery visit and the rest of the book didn’t improve my love of Jack. I think this is a book that you need to have read the previous books.

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Years ago, I fell in love with Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Gilead. Told in the voice of an older minister in 1950's Iowa, John Ames writes to his very young son, telling him his life story and sharing his beliefs. Her second novel set in the small town, Home, is a retelling

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of the prodigal son parable with John Ames' godson, Jack Boughton, (son of Ames' best friend, Reverend Robert Boughton) having returned home after twenty years, now an alcoholic petty thief who spent time in prison.

Robinson returns to this story in Jack, where we go back to the time that Jack spent away from his family. After being released from prison, Jack ends up in St. Louis, where he meets a young Black schoolteacher, Miss Della Miles. He helps Della pick up papers she dropped in the rain, and walks her home. She mistakes him for a reverend by his dress and manner and invites him into her home for tea.

Jack is entranced by Della, but knows that nothing can come of this, he is not worthy of this fine woman, not to mention that the differences in their races makes a further relationship possible. After he finds her accidentally locked in a cemetery (where he has been sleeping as he is homeless and jobless), they spend the evening together talking and opening up to each other.

Much of the novel is taken up with this evening. They share a love of poetry, both have fathers who are ministers, and both are outsiders in society. Jack fights this feeling of falling in love, but Della finds herself more willing to give in to her growing feelings for this complicated, flawed man no matter the cost to her.

After parting in the morning, Jack decides that he will try to become worthy of the man that Della believes him to be. He gets a job in a shoe store, then as a dance instructor, but the hardest obstacle for him to overcome is his alcoholism.

Robinson writes the interior life of characters so insightfully. We thoroughly see Jack, even when he can't see himself clearly. Every time the lure of alchohol calls to him, we want to reach through the page and beg him not to drink. We want him to be the better man that Della believes him to be. Jack explains himself in this passage:
"I have not actually chosen this life. The path of least resistance is not a choice, in the usual sense of the word. I know it appears to be one. But when the resistance you encounter on every other path seems, you know, indomitable, then there you are. I'm sure I have been too easily discouraged."

In 1950s St. Louis, a interracial relationships are forbidden. Della's roommate reminds her of everything she could lose- her job as a teacher, the respect and love of her family in Memphis, even her freedom- if she persues a relationship with this man. Although set seventy years ago, the race issue is relevant today.

Jack is a quiet book, like all of Robinson's books. We spend most of the book inside the head of Jack, a complicated character who may remind us of someone in our own lives. The writing, as always from Robinson, is exquisite. Reading Jack will make you more compassionate towards others, a good thing in this increasingly contentious age of only engaging on divisive social media. I will be rereading Home now with a fresh eye to what happened to Jack while he was gone. I know I will never forget him or Della. I give Jack my highest possible recommendation.

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Dreamlike Prequel to Gilead (2004)
Review of the Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover edition (September 2020)

First, a confession that I had never previously read any of Marilynne Robinson's books, including the three earlier ones centred around the fictional town of Gilead, Iowa. Jack is a prequel

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though to those events so I think that makes it a reasonable first outing. I did sneak a peak at some reviews and plot summaries of the 2004 book Gilead to understand more about the families involved and about prodigal son John (Jack) Ames Boughton's relationships.

Jack unfolds mostly as an inner monologue by the titular character in what is his redemption story. Events of his past days as a seducer, runaway, petty thief and convict are alluded to intermittently. The heart of the story and of his salvation is his courtship and love for a young black teacher named Della Miles who is the daughter of a minister in Memphis, Tennessee. Jack himself is the son of a white Presbyterian minister who still lives in Gilead, Iowa. This takes place in the early-1950's when inter-racial marriage was illegal in the United States. Della and Jack's story unfolds in St. Louis, Missouri.

I describe the book as dreamlike due to events that take place that do not always seem centred in reality. The opening "chapter" (instead of chapter headings, the start of each new section is marked by a bold larger font letter at the start of a paragraph) is a dialogue between Della and Jack that goes on for 62 pages (about 1/5th of the book) overnight in a cemetery. This is a bit of an introductory tough nut to crack as it seems to unfold in real time and you begin to worry that it will never end.

After that, the story proceeds with a cautious courtship as Jack is irresistibly drawn to Della while knowing he is putting her in criminal danger by society and possible banishment by her family. Della for her part is drawn to his cultured manners, ability to quote poetry and scripture, sometime bumbling manners and likely the lure of redeeming a fallen man. Other peculiar events surround them though, Jack is be-devilled by a pair of supposed bill-collectors who periodically arrive to beat him up and rifle his pockets. He has a quirky back and forth tug of war with his flophouse front door clerk who is a sometime ally and sometime annoyance. Stray cats are adopted but then are lost etc. (the cats are a metaphor for Jack himself). Jack seeks solace and guidance by attending meetings at a local black Baptist church.

The style of the writing is what I would call leisurely, but it does have humour and joy in it throughout. You know that it can't possibly have a happy ending under the circumstances and yet the refusal to accept that reality by the two protagonists makes for an uplifting story nevertheless.

I read Jack as part of a Book of the Month subscription to Parnassus Books First Editions Club. My continued thanks to Liisa, Martin and family for that excellent gift!

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I have really enjoyed the Gilead series up until "jack". The conversations went on too long, the thoughts in Jack's head went on even longer and it felt like it was the same thing over and over and over.

The book addressed interracial relationships in a time when they were illegal. It addressed

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being the black sheep of the family and someone who was a ne'er-do-well. What it didn't do well was address the love of Jack and Della. I don't understand why Della was head over heels in love with Jack.

Read Gilead but take a pass on this unless you want to read all four books in the Gilead books.

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This was an uneven read for me. I think my main issue is Jack as a protagonist. I think the book would have been more compelling through Della's eyes, but that's just me. There are some beautiful theological questions, and Marilynne Robinson is a gifted writer. 3.5 stars.

It would be easy to describe Jack Boughton as a prodigal son, but that might not be quite accurate. As the main character in Jack, the fourth installment in Marilynne Robinson’s beloved series of novels focusing on the lives of two religious families living in Gilead, Iowa shortly after the

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second world war, Jack is clearly a lost soul. However, he is also someone for whom redemption has not come—not yet, at least—despite the efforts and prayers of his father, the town’s Presbyterian preacher, and brother Teddy. Having introduced his ne’er-do-well ways in the earlier books (Gilead, Home, and Lila), this novel focuses on Jack after he has been released from prison and is basically living as a bum in St. Louis. There he meets Della Miles, a young black school teacher herself a minister’s daughter, and begins a halting courtship that eventually leads to something like marriage. The fact that interracial unions are still illegal at that time—and, more importantly, frowned upon by pretty much everyone else in Jack and Della’s lives—is what creates the dramatic tension in the story.

I suppose it is worth noting that I greatly admire everything I have read by this author and find her prose to be both consistently luminous and deeply affecting. That said, I did not find Jack to be nearly as compelling as the three other novels in the series, or Housekeeping, an earlier work set outside Gilead. The problem with this book is that it is told entirely from Jack’s point of view over a reasonably brief period of time, which gave the story a distinct one-note feeling in which not much actually happens. It is established fairly quickly that Jack is someone who cannot seem to get out of his own way despite his occasional good intentions and this theme is then repeated many times throughout the story. Further, while Jack’s interest in Della is plausible, her character is not sufficiently developed that it is ever possible for the reader to understand what she sees in him, especially given that the potential price they both may pay for pursuing a love affair is so incredibly high.

Still, there is much to admire about Jack, particularly for those already invested in the saga of the Boughton family. Robinson’s writing continues to be simply beautiful throughout the entire novel; I really think that she is incapable of writing a single bad sentence. There is such a thoughtful spirituality that imbues the entire work, which allows it to transcend the otherwise mundane details of a story in which not a lot of action occurs. I once again found myself transported back to a world of characters that I have come to care about over the years and even found myself rooting against my more measured judgment that things would work out this time. Inducing that sort of buy-in from the reader is undoubtedly one mark of a great writer and it is certainly enough to justify recommending the book, even if it does not quite rise to level of its predecessors.

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Robinson's newest novel, and fourth in her series about the family from Gilead, was a thoughtful, beautifully written tale of the son gone astray, Jack. A disappointment to his pastor father and upright family, Jack has been a flawed man, self described "a confirmed, inveterate bum."
The heart of

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the novel is a love story between Jack and Della, a black, English teacher and daughter of a bishop from Memphis. She has landed a job in St. Louis where Jack has gone to be away from his family, currently trying to forget the disgrace of his prison term and the sorrow he has caused another young woman. His goal is to do no harm and try to curb his natural desires to lie and steal. They meet when he stops in the rain to help her with some fallen papers and he graciously lends her his umbrella. She sees him in his dark suit and mistakes him for a reverend, a ruse he does not dispel at first. Their romance - a failed dinner out, a chance meeting in a graveyard- become the confused narratives of their mutual love. The Thanksgiving scene is wonderful. This is however around 1950 and the law forbids this relationship. As a reader, you root for them though at times you can't believe what Della sees in him, save for his love of poetry and a politeness with which he was raised. Robinson is not an easy writer, her vocabulary and illusive symbols need a concentrated effort, but I'm here to tell you it's worth it. I highly recommend this and the other books related to her community of novels. Like Faulkner and William Kennedy, it's a special treat to revisit characters that you only briefly knew before.

Some lines:

He had noticed that men in his line of worklessness, which did involve recourse to drink, were marked, sooner or later, by a crease across the forehead, but he did not touch his brow.

And here she was, Della, the woman he had recruited into his daydreams to make up for a paucity of meaning and event he sometimes found oppressive. No harm done. She was safe in his daydreams. Cherished, really.

Their lives were parallel lines that would not meet, he knew that, he would see to that. But they defined each other, somehow.

The preposterous fellow with dirty yellow hair just the color of the tobacco stains on his fingers and greasy yellow-tinted spectacles was treating him like a fool.

Then one time she set a copy of Paterson on the table in front of him, smiled to recommend it, and vanished, a little arthritically, into the stacks. He seemed to bring out the angelic in old ladies. And it was a very great book! It made it seem a profound thing to sit on a bench watching the river, the ships, the gulls, which was another way he had of killing time. He loved that book, and out of respect for that lady did not steal it, only put it behind shelved books where no one else would find it.

It was on the basis of the slight and subtle encouragements offered by despair that he had discovered a new aspiration, harmlessness, which accorded well enough with his habits if not his disposition.

Cleverness has a special piquancy when it blooms out of the fraying sleeve of failure.

Just those few notes were incitement enough to make up for the lack of an antagonist. He had heard the glass with the money in it hit the floor and the coins scatter. Oh well. Here he was, alone in an alley, bleeding again. He would have to sacrifice his handkerchief to his necktie. What a ridiculous life.

He knew he would go from being a little content to pretty content to despondent, each phase in his descent rewarding in its own way.

The city was closed, but the doors of churches were open, releasing gusts of music and sociability, and incense and pot luck and perfume.

He rubbed his eyes with a finger and thumb and polished the lenses with the corner of a very large handkerchief—“ I have to be ready for grief,” Jack’s father had said once. “You don’t always see it coming.”

A few days after his talk with Hutchins, Jack went out walking, trying to get tired enough to sleep, staying sober, so that if he did jump in the river, he could feel that his demise had the dignity of a considered choice.

But 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. There is no turning away. You’ve seen the mystery—you’ve seen what life is about. What it’s for. And a soul has no earthly qualities, no history among the things of this world, no guilt or injury or failure. No more than a flame would have. There is nothing to be said about it except that it is a holy human soul. And it is a miracle when you recognize it.”

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I didn't get very far into this book. Jack and Delia were engaged in what seemed like an endless conversation that seemed to mainly be about a perceived insult for which Jack had unsuccessfully attempted to apologize. Not my cup of tea.

I got a bit over half way through Robinson's latest Gilead novel and quit. Maybe I'll come back to it sometime.... Set in the 1950s, it's a love story of sorts between a two preachers' children: Jack,a white drunken bum and and Della, an attractive young black school teacher. The only things they

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seem to have in common are their love of poetry and their religious childhoods. Unlike some of the reviewers, I found their nights long conversation in a graveyard the most interesting part of the book. After that, it bogged down in an examination of Jack's ruminations, self-loathing and religious doubts. Just too plodding for me.

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Through this novel, Robinson explores love, loneliness, racism and the conflicts inherent in the human heart. Told totally from Jack's point of view, the reader is given insight into a most unusual man.

I may have just read this too quickly, which doesn't work for Robinson books, but I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I have her previous ones. I'll have to try it again and probably will feel differently.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

This is the fourth in the Gilead series. I have not yet read 'Lila', but have read the other two (although each can be read on its own). If you have read any of the others, you will know what to expect of this one. The

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characterization was almost painfully good, and it was very very sad in a muted but absolute way. I found this one harder to get through than the others, perhaps due to its exclusive focus on Jack. The tone is unvarying throughout, which became quite overwhelming. The ending hinted at grace, but I have my doubts.

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I listened to this book. I don't know if it was the narrator's delivery or the writing style but I found in very slow-moving. I think that Robinson's work doesn't lend itself to audio very well.

This is a continuation of Robinson's Gilead novels. Those people who have read Gilead will remember Jack

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as the prodigal son who returns toward the end of the book. This book fills in the intervening years. Jack has spent time in jail and is mostly dependent on his brother, a successful doctor in St. Louis. One day he encounters a young black woman who is about to get soaked in a sudden downpour. Jack is in possession of an umbrella (which he stole) and so he offers it and himself to get the young woman home. Della is a teacher and from a well-known family. Her father is a preacher just like Jack's father. Perhaps that gives them some common ground but really, two more dsparate people could hardly be found. Nevertheless they fall in love and are discussing marriage. Except this is the 1950s and it is illegal for blacks and whites to marry. Della's family try to convince her to change her mind but she sees something in Jack that she won't give up on. So, it is up to Jack himself to protect her. He leaves St. Louis for Chicago without telling Della where he is going.

I found it hard to understand Della. Robinson uses the first person from Jack's point of view to tell the story so we never really get inside Della's head. I think I would have liked the book better if the viewpoint had been reversed.

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