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Jack: A Novel
by Marilynne Robinson
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In September, Five Books favourite Marilynne Robinson is to publish her latest novel, Jack – the fourth book set in her mythical world of Gilead, Iowa. Existing fans of the Pulitzer- and National Book Award-winning Gilead sequence will be intrigued to hear that Jack is the story of Jack Boughton, the bad boy son of the local Presbyterian minister, and his relationship with a beautiful and brilliant African American woman who becomes his common law wife in segregated St Louis. Robinson is surely one of the greatest living English language writers. Find a brief excerpt over at the publisher’s website, here . Other fall 2020 novels of note include Yaa Gyasi’s hotly anticipated second book, Transcendent Kingdom – a follow-up to her sweeping family saga Homegoing (2016), which catapulted her to celebrity. This new novel follows a Ghanaian-American PhD candidate at Stanford University as she seeks experimental explanations for her family members’ dysfunction. Martin Amis will publish his fifteenth, Inside Story , said to be an autobiographical novel inspired by the death of his friend, the polemicist Christopher Hitchens. It begins during their time as young magazine writers, and includes appearances from stars of the London literary establishment of that era, including Iris Murdoch, Philip Larkin, Saul Bellow and his step-mother Elizabeth Jane Howard. Nick Hornby – author of the brilliantly funny and poignant High Fidelity , among other things – will publish his latest, a love story between a 40-something schoolteacher and a younger man called Just Like You . And Susanna Clarke, of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell fame, will publish her second, Piranesi . Jonathan Strange was a massive doorstopper of a storybook about two men rediscovering magic during the Napoleonic wars, and I simply can’t wait to get my hands on this new one, which promises to be another high concept work of literary fantasy set in an alternate reality.
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"In September, Five Books favourite Marilynne Robinson is to publish her latest novel, Jack – the fourth book set in her mythical world of Gilead, Iowa. Existing fans of the Pulitzer- and National Book Award-winning Gilead sequence will be intrigued to hear that Jack is the story of Jack Boughton, the bad boy son of the local Presbyterian minister, and his relationship with a beautiful and brilliant African American woman who becomes his common law wife in segregated St Louis. Robinson is surely one of the greatest living English language writers. Find a brief excerpt over at the publisher’s website, here . Other fall 2020 novels of note include Yaa Gyasi’s hotly anticipated second book, Transcendent Kingdom – a follow-up to her sweeping family saga Homegoing (2016), which catapulted her to celebrity. This new novel follows a Ghanaian-American PhD candidate at Stanford University as she seeks experimental explanations for her family members’ dysfunction. Martin Amis will publish his fifteenth, Inside Story , said to be an autobiographical novel inspired by the death of his friend, the polemicist Christopher Hitchens. It begins during their time as young magazine writers, and includes appearances from stars of the London literary establishment of that era, including Iris Murdoch, Philip Larkin, Saul Bellow and his step-mother Elizabeth Jane Howard. Nick Hornby – author of the brilliantly funny and poignant High Fidelity , among other things – will publish his latest, a love story between a 40-something schoolteacher and a younger man called Just Like You . And Susanna Clarke, of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell fame, will publish her second, Piranesi . Jonathan Strange was a massive doorstopper of a storybook about two men rediscovering magic during the Napoleonic wars, and I simply can’t wait to get my hands on this new one, which promises to be another high concept work of literary fantasy set in an alternate reality."
"Jack is the fourth of Marilynne Robinson’s novels set in Gilead, Iowa, and it is the story of John Ames Boughton, the son of Gilead’s Presbyterian minister. The Jack we have met in previous books is a ne’er do well, a prodigal son whose sins are large and small, who has encountered tragedy as well as created it. This book tells the story of his romance with Della Miles, a black woman who is also the daughter of a preacher. The first 80 pages we watch them falling in love while trapped in a graveyard – but the rest of the book they are trapped in the racism of America in the late 1940s. It is quite a time for Robinson to be explicitly addressing our racist past as we confront our racist present. In typical Robinson fashion, she is concerned with the question of whether or not this wayward man can be loved, forgiven, changed."