![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Jack.jpg\")
<\/a>Marilynne Robinson has produced three novels centered on the fictional village of Gilead, Iowa, in the mid-twentieth century. This series has garnered critical acclaim and many fans, including Barack Obama. She manifests major themes in the lives of two families in that small town,\u00a0Aeschylus by way of Our Town<\/em> \u2013 religion, poverty, racism, love, family, and what she calls \u201cthe great sadness that pervades human life.\u201d\u00a0Now she has added a fourth installment in the series, called Jack<\/em>, creating what she says is \u201cone enormous novel.\u201d<\/p>\nEach book travels the same territory from different perspectives. The first is Gilead<\/em>, told in the form of a letter written by Jack\u2019s namesake, the aging Rev. John Ames. The second book, Glory<\/em>, is narrated by Jack\u2019s sister. And the third comes to us in the voice of Lila<\/em>, Reverend Ames\u2019 young wife, a friend and fellow traveler of the waif who became a wife. In other words, by the start of Jack<\/em>, we know a lot about him\u2014a thorn in his father\u2019s side, a conundrum to his family, a \u201cbum\u201d to those who pass him in the street. This book takes place before the others, so we know this story does not end well. He is a liar, a scoundrel, a thief who loves the feeling of \u201c…thine dissolving into mine\u201d in the damp of his hand. He\u2019s a drunk, an ex-con, and, in this book, he is in love.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the engine that drives this story. He meets a woman who is everything he isn\u2019t, a woman who possesses what he does not, \u201cthe knowledge of good.\u201d\u00a0He brings all his baggage to their relationship, and she shoulders it with ease. In the exceptional first 79 pages of the book, the two of them spend a night locked in a St. Louis cemetery, where Robinson demonstrates the connection between them, capturing that unknown thing called love without telling us \u2014 the way the woman takes his arm, leans on his shoulder, the lengthy conversation about religion and poetry, all let us know they will become a couple. And that creates the dilemma that then plays out in the rest of the book in Jack\u2019s mind\u2014can he change? Does he dare commit \u201cgrand larceny\u201d by taking her from her proud family?\u00a0He vacillates, drinks, steals pages of poetry he slips into her pocket, tries not to see her, but fails. He tells her he is the Prince of Darkness, Lazarus, the Prodigal Son; she replies \u201cNo, you\u2019re a talkative man with holes in his socks.\u201d\u00a0Robinson packs so much universal into the specific here, because he is indeed all of those things.<\/p>\n The woman is an English teacher, Jack is well-read, so we hear Dickinson, Milton, William Carlos Williams in their conversation. Both are the children of preachers, so we hear the existence or not of God, original sin, the question of afterlife. Then, the biggest complication of all \u2014 she is black, he is white, so they face \u201c…as many obstacles as the combined efforts of Missouri and Tennessee could contrive for them.\u201d<\/p>\n Jack<\/em> is a remarkable, but not an easy, read. Robinson has created a narrative unlike any other current writer\u2014she writes the way people think and then speak, \u201c…to simulate the integrative work of a mind perceiving and reflecting,\u201d as she says elsewhere. Shakespeare wrote that way. Her style prohibits skimming, forces the reader to think along with the character, to stay anchored in the deepening of their dilemma. It is rough at times, claustrophobic in the confines of Jack\u2019s mind, but in the end, we feel, like Jack, \u201c…the loyalty that always restored them both, just like grace\u201d\u2014in spite of every obstacle that Jack, Missouri and Tennessee can throw up.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bob Moyer, an avid reader, often goes through books at a rapid pace. But those tend to be mysteries. This novel, he says, forced him to slow down. Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer JACK. By Marilynne Robinson. Farrah Straus Giroux. 309 pages. $27. Marilynne Robinson has produced three novels centered on the fictional village of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1185,383,1184],"class_list":["post-2742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contemporary-literary-fiction","tag-jack","tag-literary-fiction","tag-marilynne-robinson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2744,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2742\/revisions\/2744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}