When I Was a Child I Read Books

Reviews

“Brilliant . . . As the credo of a liberal Christian, Robinson's new book of essays stands on its own. But it is also an illuminating commentary on her novels . . . This collection is a rewarding reminder that the author's faith infuses every word she writes . . . Like every good preacher, Marilynne Robinson judges others while including herself--in theory at least--in the judgment.” —Andrew Delbanco, New York Times Book Review

“With her newest book of essays, When I Was A Child I Read Books, Marilynne Robinson affirms that my deep admiration and respect for her are well-placed. ‘Every great question is very old,' she writes, and here, as has been the case throughout her career as a writer, the great questions concern her most. Robinson displays an exceptional gift for deciphering the zeitgeist and offering generous counsel.” —Kurt Armstrong, Paste Magazine

“The Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist returns with a collection of essays that are variously literary, political and religious . . . Robinson is a splendid writer, no question--erudite, often wise and slyly humorous (there is a clever allusion to the birther nonsense in a passage about Noah Webster). Articulate and learned descriptions and defenses of the author's Christian faith.” —Kirkus

“Author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Gilead, Robinson weighs in with a series of tightly developed essays, some personal but mostly more general, on the Big Themes: social fragmentation in modern America, human frailty, faith. Her project is a hard-edged liberalism, sustained by a Calvinist ethic of generosity . . . In these times of the ever-ascending religious right, in the aftermath of what she sees as the ideologically secularist-driven cold war, Robinson bravely explores the corrosive potion of ‘Christian anti-Judaism' and what it really ought to mean to be ‘a Christian nation.'” —Publisher's Weekly (starred review)

“There is more food for thought in one of Robinson's well-turned paragraphs than in entire books. Esteemed for her award-winning novels Gilead (2004) and Home (2008), Robinson is a consummate and clarion essayist. In her third and most resounding collection, she addresses our toxic culture of diminishment, arguing that as our view of society shrinks, public discourse coarsens, corruption spreads, education is undermined, science denigrated, spirituality and loving kindness are siphoned from religion, and democracy itself is imperiled.” —Booklist (starred review)

“The indomitable Marilynne Robinson radiates genius in her collection of essays.” —Vanity Fair

“[When I Was a Child I Read Books] is the equivalent of an uncommon library ticket, an admission to the subjects that most obsess her: the frail human enterprise, faith and its absence, mysteries that elude language. . . This book is scholarly closework, as painstaking as a Victorian sampler but more subtle. She is determined never to undervalue or oversimplify. There is a sense that to be meditative is a necessary part of being alive. She is especially clear on the absurdity of seeing religion and science as adversarial . . . Robinson is adept at studying the small print and reading between the lines but she never forgets to look up at the stars.” —Kate Kellaway, The Guardian

“When I Was a Child, by far Robinson's most political work to date, turns her old questions to the problems now directly confronting us. The book is a defense of what she considers the grand traditions of American democracy--generosity, hope, and a radical openness to new experience--waged against a society that seems to believe itself in irreversible decline . . . Robinson's great virtue as an essayist is her ability to combine a deep knowledge of this country's literary, intellectual, and religious canon with a demotic, impassioned tone that is American in the highest sense.” —Charles Petersen, Bookforum

“The greatest pleasures of this book are its provocations, which are inseparable from its prose. Ms. Robinson channels the cadences of Emerson and Whitman and says that she owes the stately shape of her sentences to her school-days reading of Cicero. ‘I seem to know by intuition a great deal that I cannot find words for,' she writes, ‘and to enlarge the field of my intuition every time I fail to find these words'.” —Thomas Meaney, The Wall Street Journal

“At her best she's a wise, droll and incisive essayist. These pieces concern faith, education, family, writing and reading, and . . . they're enlightening and a pleasure to read . . . Some of the most effective and immediate essays in the collection deal with Robinson's decision to become a writer and how she approaches her craft . . . These pages will be of great interest to her many devoted readers and would-be novelists alike.” —Kevin Canfield, The Kansas City Star

“It's never been easy to categorize Marilynne Robinson, whose new collection of essays . . . is no exception. Each of the pieces gathered here practices what Robinson preaches, combating the lazy habit of using ‘a straight-edge ruler in a fractal universe' . . . she works to free her readers from the ‘tendency to fit a tight and awkward carapace of definition over humankind,' in which we ‘try to trim the living creature to fit the dead shell' . . . When we are alone, Robinson suggests, we're best positioned for a ‘meditative, free appreciation of whatever comes under one's eye'--including other people, who we're otherwise apt to misread.” —Mike Fischer, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Robinson's penchant for complex sentences and lofty subjects mirrors the thoughtfulness of what she wants to say. And while she may be an old-fashioned stylist, she is also a progressive thinker who yokes rigorous scholarship with profound attention to her subjects . . . Her new essay collection, ‘When I Was a Child I Read Books,' may best be served with a straight-back chair and a mug of piping-hot black coffee.” —Maggie Galehouse, The Houston Chronicle

“The latest turn in Robinson's thinking is toward politics, specifically her strong intuition of political crisis in America. She's talked politics before, but it's never been quite this intense or urgent . . . Besides the essays' tone, which is consistently heartfelt, moving from grave (‘We do not deal with one another as soul to soul.') to joyful (‘I love the writers of my thousand books.'), her political concerns give the book a kind of informal unity.” —Alex Engebretson, The Millions

“It is difficult not to quote Ms. Robinson at length, so finely calibrated are her sentences. Here, it's a tonic to see a rhetoric of such righteous anger turned, for once, against those who believe it is virtuous to attempt to deprive their fellow citizens of aid and succor . . . these essays represent what Robinson calls ‘an archaeology of my own thinking, mainly to attempt an escape from assumptions that would embarrass me if I understood their origins.'.” —Michael Robbins, The New York Observer

“In an age when such American politicians as Michele Bachman display an astounding ignorance of the history of her own country . . . Robinson's essay collection [is] a valuable contribution to public discourse in the United States.” —Philip Marchand, The National Post

“Robinson's country is at a political and moral crossroads, so she wants to remind her readers of its history, what it stood for and how far away it has moved from its founding principles . . . Her rhetoric is of the gentle, thoughtful kind that nevertheless hides a rapier, which she unleashes just when she needs it. Mary Wollstonecraft was once insultingly called a ‘hyena in petticoats' by a man who felt threatened by her intellect. Like Wollstonecraft, Robinson's intellect, too, is threatening. And if it can threaten us into action, is all the greater for that.” —Lesley McDowell, The Independent

“When I Was a Child is a broadside defense of literature and classical liberalism that demands we include the unfashionable Old Testament as a foundation of both. Through rigorous citation and deep personal reflection, Robinson builds an excellent case . . . Over the book's 10 essays, Robinson systematically marshals text-based evidence that upends popular beliefs about faith, America and their uneasy commingling--all themes explored in her novels Housekeeping, Gilead and Home as well.” —August Brown, Los Angeles Times

“Robinson offers her essays in the face of this confusion, as ‘night thoughts of a baffled humanist' . . . She aims to defend both religion and humanism from their not-quite-so cultured despisers, many of whom may be found self-identifying as ‘religious' or as ‘humanists.' . . . Robinson takes aim . . . at those who would diminish the human person . . . Whatever else these new essays are--and they are many wonderful and interesting things--they are Robinson's determination not to diminish mystery, not to make foolishness of the world or the human person by forcing theories to limit our wonder at God, the human brain and mind, the cosmos.” —Wesley Hill, Books & Culture

“This is a rare writer about America and one it seems to me we need. Desperately. Whether writing about Jefferson or Johann Friederich Oberlin or ‘the dark gorgeousness' of the mind of Edgar Allan Poe, Robinson is a self-described ‘humanist' who says ‘the presence of human consciousness is a radical qualitative change in the natural order' . . . Her imagination of other lives, in these essays, defines an imperiled democracy to which, she says, we need to remain loyal . . . One of the year's stealthy great books.” —Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News

“[Robinson] questions accepted opinion and helps us think through its implications and its reasonableness . . . Be ready to have certain assumptions challenged and to think through important issues while enjoying a master of prose.” —Gordon Houser, The Wichita Eagle

“A provocative--and deceptive--plainness is a constant feature of Robinson's work, which asks us to accept the hidden richness of the mundane . . . [When I Was a Child I Read Books is] the fascinating expression of a rooted and contrary mind.” —John Broening, The Denver Post

“In a climate increasingly averse to compassion and unappreciative of curiosity, Robinson has published When I Was a Child I Read Books, a glimmering, provocative collection of essays, each a rhetorically brilliant, deeply felt exploration of education, culture, and politics . . . When I Was a Child is a brutally, beautifully intelligent jeremiad on the cynical state of American culture and politics, but Robinson is rare today in that she uses the language of faith to advance the most cultivated humanistic values all in an attempt to defend what she sees as an imperiled American greatness.” —Michael Washburn, Boston Globe

“These rich, uncompromising essays are not for everyone but--to make a Robinson-like distinction of my own--their rewards should be for anyone, of any faith, who cares to dive deeply into a distant world.” —Emily Stokes, Financial Times

“What this collection does contain in abundance, though, are intelligent discourses on contemporary intellectual culture . . . Robinson . . . illuminates the cobwebbed corners of her mind. The effort required to relish the collected works presented here will be worth it.” —Noori Passela, The National

“If there is any fear that the fast-moving world of the Internet and the iPhone has destroyed our powers of concentration, or our ability to think lucidly and beautifully, or to create surprising and powerful designs from philosophical concerns, that fear will be put to rest by Marilynne Robinson's new book of elegant essays . . . Robinson's voice is thoughtful and intimate, but she does some thundering, too, on ancient, complex and important subjects . . . Her ideas are unconventional, and she sees the world in surprising ways.” —Roxana Robinson, The Washington Post

“For Robinson, human beings--and especially, readers--must collectively imagine humanity, because imagination creates moral communities. It is through language--silent, personal, and solitary experiences of language -- that we engage in an ‘amazing human conversation,' one that delivers us to ‘place[s] across millennia, through weal and woe.' . . . [An] illuminating collection . . . What . . . ring[s] true in When I Was a Child are the intimate notes.” —Michelle Kuo and Albert Wu, The Los Angeles Review of Books

“Whether writing fiction or nonfiction . . . Robinson displays a compelling blend of intensity and austerity . . . In some of the . . . best moments [in When I Was a Child I Read Books], Robinson describes her life as a reader, with ‘my library all around me, my cloud of witnesses to the strangeness and brilliance of human experience.' She expresses gratitude for the books which have ‘taught me most of what I know....and trained my attention and my imagination.' And in the title essay, she recalls herself as a ‘bookish child in the far West.'” —Carmela Ciuraru, Biographile

“Readers . . . have come to expect a blend of acute observation, deep learning, courageous assertion and compelling prose. Happily, Robinson's new book of essays, When I Was a Child I Read Books, provides readers with all of this and more: a rare combination of wisdom and beauty that transforms our vision of our current cultural moment . . . Robinson's book urges Americans to stop our herding and our name-calling, to refuse to engage in wolfishness and blather and to nurture the radical power of the individual self through the agency of the word--in short, to drop everything and read.” —Angela Alaimo O'Donnell, America