Delve Readers Seminar: From Another Angle: Marilynne Robinson’s Home, Lila, and Jack

In this seminar we will read Robinson’s third, fourth, and fifth novels, Home, Lila, and Jack. These novels complete the quartet that begins with Gilead. Home takes up the story of one of that novel’s characters, Jack Boughton. Nemesis of Gilead’s narrator John Ames and son of Ames’s best friend, Rev. Robert Boughton, Jack has returned to his childhood home unexpectedly after a twenty-year absence. Now he, his aging father, and his recently-divorced younger sister Glory must navigate a difficult and often painful reunion, haunted by the mistakes and misunderstandings of the past.
Lila tells the story of John Ames’s late-life marriage from the perspective of his young wife, whose quiet gentleness reveals little of her wayward, often lonely history. Lila’s story, and her love for Reverend Ames, attest to the resilience of human nature and the surprising, unpredictable ways in which people are drawn together.
Jack, published in 2020, takes us further into the life of the enigmatic and troubled Jack Boughton, as he struggles against his wayward nature to right his course and face the challenges posed in 1950s America by his interracial relationship with Della.

Texts by Marilynne Robinson:
Home
Lila
Jack

Delve Access Program
We want Delve seminars to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. We are happy to offer an Access Program which provides reduced tuition to qualifying participants. Most Delves have at least one access spot available. Contact Susan Moore at susan@literary-arts.org if you would like to take a Delve at the Access Rate

Sara Atwood teaches English literature and writing at Portland Community College and Portland State University. She is Co-Director of the Ruskin Society of North America and has lectured widely, both in the US and abroad, on John Ruskin, education, the environment, and language. Her work has been published in Nineteenth-Century Prose, The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies, and Carlyle Studies Annual. She is the author of Ruskin’s Educational Ideals and has contributed essays to a number of books, including Teaching Victorian Literature in the Twenty-First Century, John Ruskin and Nineteenth-Century Education, William Morris and John Ruskin, and Victorian Environmental Nightmares.