![]() In her Pulitzer-winning 2005 novel Gilead, her character Reverend John Ames works out a limited number of themes-grace, forgiveness, fatherhood-with a slowness that reflects the 1950s small-town Iowa that surrounds him. Much of what makes Robinson’s nonfiction a challenge to digest can be understood in terms of its profound stylistic difference from her fiction. It is that same range and eloquence that makes When I Was a Child I Read Books move sporadically between being deeply insightful and irrefutably maddening, sometimes on the very same page. Reading Robinson feels like sitting down for a conversation with one’s most widely read and psychologically insightful friend, a person whose wit is surpassed only by the lucidity of her language. Robinson’s nonfiction guides readers through fields as disparate as cosmology, evolutionary psychology, economics and modern biblical criticism-all the while identifying the theological thread that holds them together. ![]() ![]() To those who fear that Christian cultural engagement is in a state of intellectual poverty, I suggest looking to the work of Marilynne Robinson for reason to hope. ![]()
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