When I Was a Child I Read Books: Essays

Ever since the 1981 publication of her stunning debut, Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson has built a sterling reputation as a writer of sharp, subtly moving prose, not only as a major American novelist but also as a rigorous thinker and incisive essayist. In When I Was a Child I Read Books, Robinson returns to and expands upon the themes that have preoccupied her work, doing so with renewed vigor. Writing about the global debt crisis and the charged political and social climate in the United States: the deeply embedded role of generosity in Christian faith; or individualism and the myth of the American West, Robinson demonstrates once again why she is regarded as one of this generation's essential writers.