Excerpt from Jack by Marilynne Robinson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Maybe not."

"If they decide to make this into something compromising, I'm finished."

"Well," he said, "we've got tonight to get through, in any case. You could slip your shoes off. Keep them a little drier. They're not doing you any good, anyway, there's not much to them. A few straps." She looked at him, so he said, "If that was a rude suggestion, I'm sorry. This is quite a novel situation, even for me." And he laughed.

"No, it might be best. Better than walking home barefoot tomorrow."

"That was my thought. There are paths through the graves. The acorns haven't fallen yet. The hickory nuts."

She put her hand on a headstone and pulled off her shoes. "Well, there. I guess this will be all right. It's ridiculous. Ridiculous."

I promise I won't think less of you. That is what he almost said. But he caught himself.

He laughed. "Sorry. Anyway, I can barely see you at all. You could, you know, take off—"

"Don't, please."

"Take off your hat. And borrow mine. That's all I was going to say! Since yours wouldn't keep off the rain."

Silence. All right, then.

Finally she said, "Did you ever wonder why no one except Hamlet seems sorry that the old King Hamlet is dead? He's hardly cold in his grave."

"I'm afraid I can't claim to know the play well, Miss Miles. My father cut it up with scissors and taped the pieces into a loose-leaf scrapbook, so we could act it out. So they could. What was left of it didn't make much sense. It wouldn't have, anyway. Our Ophelia, my sister Glory, was six or seven. She'd give all her flowers to the ghost— She was always wandering in on the wrong scenes, even after she should have been dead. Sharing out the popcorn. My father wouldn't say a word to her about it. He said it was an improvement. She sang 'Jesus Loves Me' in her mad scene because the actual song didn't survive the scissors. So my sense of it all is likely to be misinformed. I was interested to read the thing whole. That's why I borrowed your book."

Then he said, "I believe this is the kind of conversation you were hoping for? Scenes of domestic life?"

She said, "It's strange no one thinks Hamlet should be king. It seems as though there were stories behind the play we only get glimpses of. But nothing is done to hide them, either, I mean the gaps they leave."

"Yes, now that you mention it. One time our Ophelia got into the tub with all her clothes on, to rehearse her death scene. My brother Teddy caught her at it, and they talked about the dangers of playing at drowning in a bathtub. He said she didn't have to rehearse, because no one sees it happen. Otherwise somebody would have told Ophelia to get out of the water, probably her brother. She said, They did see! Somebody just stood there and watched me drown! Mermaid-like to muddy death, you know—she had a point, it would have taken a while. She came down the stairs trailing bathwater, shouting, Who let me drown! They decided it had to have been Gertrude, since she knew all about it. And nothing made sense, anyway, so no harm done."

She said, "My father never had much time to spend at home. He's sort of a leader in the community, I guess. He gets called away constantly. He spends lots of time with lots of people, trying to sort things out for them. It comes with serving a big church in a city. Especially a colored church, I think. He always made us show him our homework and our report cards, but he says he has a thousand children to look after, and that's true. We understood that. And then there are always people in the house, uncles and cousins and strangers of one kind and another. It's not such a peaceful life."

"One time my father was late to a funeral because Teddy and I had a game that went into extra innings. The widow dressed him down a little, I guess. He told her and anyone who ever reminded him of it that it was an exceptional game. We almost won."

Excerpted from Jack by Marilynne Robinson. Copyright © 2020 by Marilynne Robinson. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.