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📚 Jack by Marilynne Robinson
✍️ Jane Austen
📺 The Jetsons (my Dad grew up in Jetsonville)
Singer Jason Isbell
🎵 Jack and Diane

#manicmonday #LetterJ @CBee

Yes, after gushing over Marilynne Robinson‘s writing in Gilead, Home, and Lila, I‘m having to bail on Jack. 74 pages in and he and Della are still in the cemetery….I‘m weary and having difficulty believing this scene and their exchange. #MarilynneRobinson #Gilead #Gileadseries

One of the best books I‘ve ever read in my life.
12/11/2021

Road trip! #20BooksofSummer #WesternKansas

OMG 6 pages in and a reference to Hamlet! (I just finished Hamnet yesterday!!) Book Coinky-Dink

I think the writing is so well done and it takes a great writer to make such a flawed character likeable. And although I liked so many aspects of this novel, I had a hard time staying focused while reading. I didn‘t love Gilead so I think it‘s just not my style- although I completely respect this author and will pick up her next!

The final part of the Gilead tetralogy and I‘ll miss it terribly. The gentleness with which Ms. Robinson unwraps Jack‘s inner world (perhaps too philosophical at times, but fascinating nonetheless) had me enthralled. At the heart of it, it‘s a love story, the way two people fundamentally different manage to find and love each other. But it‘s also about rich inner lives, consequences and the very essence of our human nature. A lovely read!

⭐️⭐️⭐️ I love Gilead, Home, and Lila, but this one is just too much for me right now. Interior, abstract, and philosophical. I‘ll save this for a different season.

This is a genre that I don‘t read often. A love story. The writing is beautiful and the subject matter is at times difficult. It‘s St Louis 1940. Jack is a white, thin drifter who drinks too much, Della is a black school teacher from a respectable family. Interracial relationships are illegal!
I found it slow at times and may have benefitted from reading the previous books from the Gilead Trilogy.😊
#americanfiction #4 stars

On the surface, Jack isn‘t a romantic hero. He‘s a bum, an alcoholic, a petty thief, and a liar...but he‘s also incredibly honest in his self awareness. Jack falls for Della...in an age where black and white don‘t mix and are still very segregated. A lot of the interaction between Jack and Della takes place through conversations. Not a standard romance with a typical happy ending, but a look at possibilities during segregation.

I made it!! #Bookspin list for December!!

Since she assumed we know three versions of Jack's story already, she jumps in with a disagreement he is having with a woman, and the reader does not immediately know what is happening. All is revealed, but time is not entirely linear in Gilead and we will revisit some of the story a few times, from different angles.

Just finished Gilead starting Jack next week!

What a delightful surprise!! This came in the mail today. I had entered a giveaway in GoodReads!! I have not read her before. Gilead is now in my TBR.

Melancholy & luminous, this historical love story explores the conflicted inner life of a white preacher‘s son who has fallen hard for a black preacher‘s daughter. Jack is an alcoholic bum & petty thief. Della is a smart, gentle paragon, although steadfast in thwarting family & societal expectations by remaining faithful to Jack. Romance isn‘t my thing, but the all-cards-stacked-against situation says something larger about American life.

He was nothing, a mere unshielded nerve, a pang mollified by a drink of two, a shine on her shoes.

If you‘ve seen me go on (and I do go on) about Marilynne Robinson‘s Gilead novels, it will come as no surprise to see that I adored this 4th book. 💔

Full review is on my blog: http://sprainedbrain.blog/2020/10/10/review-jack-by-marilynne-robinson/

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

I‘ve discovered a new sleep aid: this audiobook. I don‘t think it‘s narrator Adam Verner‘s fault because he also read the last audiobook I listened to and I didn‘t fall asleep once during The Good German.

For fan‘s of Marilynne Robinson‘s Gilead series this is a beautiful addition to the cannon told from Jack Boughton‘s POV.

http://obsessedbookaholic.com/2020/09/29/jack-book-review/

I always find comfort in Marilynne Robinson‘s warm prose, and certainly more so in these chaotic times. This latest book in her Gilead series centers on Jack Boughton. If you have read Home, you know how things turn out for Jack and Della, but we meet them here at the beginning of their relationship. Robinson maintains a clarity that is always a pleasure, as is the compassion and empathy she always shows her characters.