Jack by Marilynne Robinson

The publication of a new novel by Marilynne Robinson is always an event. She is one of the few authors whose output I eagerly await, and I had Jack preordered – it arrived a couple of weeks before the official publication date, and I couldn’t resist jumping right in. It’s the fourth of the Gilead series, though technically you can read them in any order. Chronologically, it comes before Home.

Jack is the first of the series not to take place at all in the town of Gilead, though it certainly haunts the entire novel. Jack is the wayward son of Reverend Robert Boughton, one of several sons and daughters but the only one who turned away from the family completely. As this novel opens, we see him living in a small town far away, occasionally visited by his kindly brother Teddy, but more often collecting the money that Teddy leaves for him at a previous address. He is too proud and damaged to return home, even for his mother’s funeral. But he is also hopeful of improvement – of his fortunes improving, of improving himself, of finding someone who believes he is worth the effort. But he also reviles those opportunities. Jack is in a constant war with himself. We see him in Gilead as the casually cruel neighbour’s son of John Ames’s memory; in Home as the prodigal son who has been quietened by life, but cannot help resisting a reunion. In Jack, we see the man between those stages.

After a few pages, showing Jack and a young African-American woman called Della, whom he has offended in a manner that isn’t immediately clear, the scene shifts to a cemetery – and then we enter an extraordinary section of the novel. Jack and Della are both spending the night locked in there. This is habitual for Jack, and an accident for Della. For dozens of pages, Robinson shows us their conversation in real time. It reminded me a lot of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, which are among my favourite films. They talk about nothing and everything, revealing as much in their silences as their replies. Neither opens their hearts – both have difficulties with trust.

She took a deep breath. ”I’m not going to get into this with you, Mr Boughton.”

Why did he persist? She was reconsidering, taking her purse and her bouquet into her lap. Could that be what he wanted her to do? It wouldn’t be self-defeat, precisely, because at best there would be only these few hours, tense and probationary, and then whatever he might want to rescue from them afterward for the purposes of memory. That other time, when the old offense was fresh, she had seemed to regret it for his sake as much as her own. He had seen kindness weary before. It could still surprise him a little.

He nodded and stood up. ”You’d rather I left you alone. I’ll do that. I’ll be in shouting distance. In case you need me.”

”No,” she said. ”If we could just talk a little.”

”Like two polite strangers who happen to be spending a night in a cemetery.”

”Yes, that’s right.”

”Okay.” So he sat down again. ”Well,” he said, ”what brings you here this evening, Miss Miles?”

”Pure foolishness, That’s all it was.” And she shook her head.

[…]

She said, ”I owe you an apology. I haven’t been polite.”

”True enough,” he said. ”So.”

”So?”

”So, pay up.”

She laughed. ”Please accept my apology.”

”Consider it done. Now,” he said, ”you accept mine.”

She shrugged. ”I don’t really want to do that.”

”Fair’s fair, isn’t it?”

”No, it isn’t, not all the time. Besides, I promised myself I wouldn’t.”

There’s a danger, when one starts quoting Robinson, that one will never stop. In that ‘[…]’, I cut out quite a bit, but I wanted to show how she uses dialogue – that sounds so inconsequential, but builds up the relationship of characters so well. In all her novels, I think she might be best at people disagreeing but never quite coming to the point. Every argument – and Jack and Home are full of conversations that are almost arguments – has two people afraid to speak all they are thinking, awkwardly hovering around truths, trying to work out exactly how much of themselves they can reveal. It’s all so masterly.

Jack is a romance, of sorts – the most cautious and often melancholy romance you can imagine. Because, of course, the barriers here are not just the hurts and mistrusts of Della and Jack, but the fact that they are from different races at a time where a marriage between them would be illegal in many US states and make them likely victims of discrimination in all of them. Interestingly, back home in Iowa there would have been no law against their union. Where Jack and Della now are, their fledgling relationship is illegal. And Della’s family are keen that she is not hurt – as well as believing ideologically that African-Americans should marry African-Americans. Della’s hard life becomes still harder, and Robinson is excellent at showing her gradual, reluctant, and often poorly rewarded affection for Jack – even while Jack and his emotions remain centre stage.

It’s hard to think of many things that Robinson doesn’t do excellently. Perhaps structure is one – or the signposting of structure, at least. The narrative leaps back and forth a bit, particularly around their first date, and it was sometimes a little confusing to remember where we were. But, without the achronology, that scene in the cemetery would have lost its power.

The real star of the book is Robinson’s writing. It’s the sort of novel to read slowly, savouring her impossibly good writing. So often, I would have to pause, having read an observation so perfect, or a trait so strikingly described, that it deserved a moment or two of reflection. Here’s one bit I highlighted:

There were times in his youth when his imagination of destruction were so powerful that the deed itself seemed as bad as done. So he did it. It was as if the force of the idea were strong enough that his collaboration in it was trivial.

Jack has been described as a novel about grace – and ‘grace’ is, indeed, the final word of the book. Robinson is a wise theologian, and certainly the idea of grace is threaded throughout. Jack is a man who cannot believe he deserves anything – and, indeed, the doctrine of grace shows us that good things can be given irrespective of deserving. The gift of Della’s love, the prospective reunion with his family, even the idea of a job and home – these are undeserved gifts of grace that Jack finds difficult to receive. But it is true that to understand all is to forgive all. The Jack we see in earlier Gilead novels becomes, in Jack, so rich and full and deep a portrait that one cannot help but empathise with him, failings and all.

To put it simply, this is an extraordinary and wonderful novel. Even more extraordinary is the fact that Robinson doesn’t revise – she just writes out the novel, first time. What a gift. I hope she never stops adding to the Gilead world. Jack is a strong contender for my favourite of the series – and if she can give this much depth to each character, I can’t see why the small canvas need ever be completely filled.