This wasn't a bad book, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. I think too much of it just went right over my head. ( )

Gaines is perhaps best known for writing "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" and "A Lesson Before Dying." Like most writers he has written a few more than "the famous ones." Gaines came of age in rural Louisiana and also in California, moving there at 15. He became a reader and a writer in Vallejo, California. The town once had a lovely Carnegie library and there Gaines, in his own words, has said he "started reading and reading and reading. I fell in love with books." A very interesting talk can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1dRr5-rw0w A little before the 3 minute mark he talks about first being allowed to go to the library in Vallejo. (In Louisiana libraries were for whites only). The entire piece is about 20 minutes and I found it wonderfully instructive. Gaines says, if I were a book, what would I be? Maybe Don Quixote.

His works however reflect the south and Louisiana where he also lived and which formed him and where he wants to make a difference. That is where he found what he needed to write about. Louisiana and the people. He wants to bring issues to the attention of his race and make people think about them. He doesn't hand out answers in this novel.

In My Father's house is set in a smallish Louisiana town in 1970 (with two Baptist and one Catholic church). The Rev Phillip Martin of one of the Baptist churches is a strong civil rights leader, but he is forced to face his past when the angry young man who calls himself Richard X comes to town. The mysterious Richard X is the Reverend Martin's son from a troubled youth. The Reverend has a past he has tried to put behind him, but it haunts him and it has followed him. I thought that complex circumstances and character relationships were handled well here at times. Some of the writing, perhaps most, is very direct. Other times not so easy to keep things straight for me with the internal dialogue and struggles of the main character. I think this is because Phillip Martin knows his past but we the reader do not, and it is not revealed all that much at the beginning of the story. We get little bits and it really is only towards the very end that we see the life that the Rev. Phillip Martin once led and tried to put behind him 15 years before the time of this story when he found God and eventually his calling. Things do not get tied up neatly by the end and we don't really have answers. The last quarter or so of the book is a bit frustrating in fact, and probably keeps this from being called a "great book", but we do have a good book. It is certainly American literature.

Well worth the read and I will be reading more of Gaines novels. The problem with discussing some books is the usual one - I would have to discuss plot elements that would spoil the story for most readers.

I'm not sure In My Father's House is a 4 star book but I bumped it up from 3 1/2 because I think it made a good effort (for a 1978 book) to paint a portrait of a troubled black man who was trying to be a leader of men and in his own way try and redeem himself and pay for the many sins of his past. It is set in 1970 following the JFK-RFK-MLK assassinations. The primary character's troubled past extended well past youth however and we actually see little of it until the very end. The glimpses we get are both good and bad things. It was mostly about a failure to take responsibility for a woman he loved and the children he begat. It is more than that - he led a wild and loose life and left it behind. I think it is rather naïve to think one can put something like that away without consequences and I think that is what Gaines is trying to show us here. ( )

Un jeune inconnu arrive dans la petite ville de St Adrienne, en Louisiane. Sa présence inquiète les habitants car il parle peu et marche jour et nuit dans les rues froides et humides, sans but apparent. Malgré cela, il va être invité chez le pasteur Philippe Martin, homme très respecté de cette communauté noire américaine car il œuvre pour le respect des droits civique (nous sommes en 1970). Cependant, à la seule vue de ce jeune homme, le pasteur perd pied et tombe à la renverse devant ses invités sans pouvoir se relever. comment un homme de cette stature peut-il s'écrouler de cette façon ? A-t-il reconnu le jeune homme ?
Un romans intimiste sur l'histoire d'un homme tout autant qu'il replace la société américaine des années 70 dans son contexte de lutte contre la ségrégation raciale. Poignant. ( )