Home Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Predestination and our BookBrowse Review of Home.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

About this Guide
The following author biography and list of questions about Home are intended as resources to aid individual readers and book groups who would like to learn more about the author and this book. We hope that this guide will provide you a starting place for discussion, and suggest a variety of perspectives from which you might approach Home.


About the Book
A novel that enthralled America and garnered the Pulitzer Prize, Gilead transported readers to a small Iowa town at the cultural crossroads of the 1950s. Returning once again to that singular time and place, Marilynne Robinson has crafted a wholly independent, deeply affecting novel taking place in the householdof the Reverend Robert Boughton, whose closest friend John Ames narrated Gilead in a voice at once tender and luminous.

Home begins as Glory Boughton returns to Gilead at the age of thirty-eight to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack, the family's prodigal son, joins her after twenty years away.  Named for John Ames, his godfather, Jack struggles to make peace with his past, marked by alcoholism and failed attempts at conventional living. Yet he is his father's most beloved child. In what may be their final reunion, Jack and Robert struggle to understand their difficult relationship, while Glory attempts to come to terms with the lost promises of her youth.


Discussion Questions

1. What does "home" mean to Robert Boughton and his children? What does the Boughton house signify to his family? With whom do they feel most at home?
2. How does Glory's opinion of Jack change throughout the novel? What enables them to trust each other? In what ways is that trust strained? How does their relationship compare to yours with your siblings?
3. How is the Boughton household affected by the presence of a television set? How does this reflect a shift that took place in many households throughout America in the 1950s? Were you surprised by Robert Boughton's comments about African Americans, and by his reaction to the televised race riots?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Picador. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.