Jack
An Oprah's Book Club Pick
-
- $13.99
Publisher Description
'[Her work] defines universal truths about what it means to be human' Barack Obama
'Marilynne Robinson is one of the greatest writers of our time' Sunday Times
'Jack is the fourth in Robinson's luminous, profound Gilead series and perhaps the best yet' Observer
Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the American National Humanities Medal, returns to the world of Gilead with Jack, the final in one of the great works of contemporary American fiction.
Jack tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the loved and grieved-over prodigal son of a Presbyterian minister in Gilead, Iowa, a drunkard and a ne'er-do-well. In segregated St. Louis sometime after World War II, Jack falls in love with Della Miles, an African-American high school teacher, also a preacher's child, with a discriminating mind, a generous spirit and an independent will. Their fraught, beautiful story is one of Robinson's greatest achievements.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Sometimes the best way to understand history is to experience it yourself—through a heartbreaking and painstakingly researched novel like this one. Iowa preacher’s son Jack Boughton—who first appeared in Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Gilead—has fallen in love with Della Miles, a Black schoolteacher living in segregated, post–World War II St. Louis. Though Jack and Della’s clandestine affair begins with all the giddiness of a new crush, the harsh realities of an interracial relationship in the Jim Crow era quickly come crashing in. Jack is a powerful love story that stands beautifully on its own, although fans of the previous Gilead novels will relish the chance to dive more deeply into fascinating characters they’ve met before. The couple at the centre of this sweeping novel may be fictional, but the world they live in feels intensely real, pulling us into the realities of a terrible historical period that still reverberates throughout American culture and beyond.
