The good news about “Jack,” the fourth in Marilynne Robinson’s series of novels about the residents of the small town of Gilead, Iowa, is announced in its title. John Ames “Jack” Boughton, the miscreant son of the town’s Presbyterian minister, is among the more memorable characters in recent American literature. Jack meets and falls in love with Della Miles, a high school teacher and also the child of a minister. This is the era of Jim Crow and strictly enforced miscegenation laws, a milieu Robinson evokes with small, deft strokes. When Jack opens his mouth, he tends to say the same six or seven things, as if Robinson were pulling a string in his back.

Source: New York Times September 21, 2020 09:00 UTC