The popularity of Marilynne Robinson manages to be at once both thoroughly deserved and entirely unexpected. That is, if popularity is the right word for what remains a relatively niche (if approaching cult) literary following among those who enjoy the plot-lite, highly poetic end of the literary fiction spectrum - but also many who don't.
"Marilynne Robinson's Gilead is clearly a modern classic, and it hasn't even been in print for five minutes," boggled Nick Hornby in a 2005 review of the first of Robinson's (now three) novels set in the tiny Iowa town of Gilead. "I didn't even mind that it's essentially a book about Christianity, narrated by a Christian ... In fact, I am writing these words in a theological college somewhere in England, where I will spend the next several years," he jested, "[which] only goes to show you that you never know how a novel's going to affect you."
Read Full Article »