When I Was a Child I Read Books
When I Was a Child I Read Books
Of Marilynne Robinson, Michael Arditti said that there is 'no contemporary novelist whose work I would rather read' However she is not only a writer of sharp, subtly moving prose, but also a rigorous thinker and incisive essayist. In this luminous new collection she returns to the themes which have preoccupied her bestselling novels: the place literature has in life, the role of faith in modern living, the contradictions inherent in human nature. Clear-eyed and forceful as ever, Robinson demonstrates once again why she is regarded as one of our best-loved writers.
Not to be clichéd, but this collection of essays on human nature, the nature of writing, American politics, the purpose of education, the intersection of these, and much more, was like a drink of water in a desert, or perhaps, a bright shining light upon a page I'd been struggling to read. Robinson interrogates, in crystal-clear prose, things which I think trouble many of us in a vague sort of way about current Western culture: why are we increasingly distrustful and at each other's throats? is education merely to be utilitarian? how have we lost our sense of the mystery of the world, and why might this rightly sadden us? The answers she comes to are both incisive and inspiring, and will surely be enriching for the person of faith and the person of no faith alike.