When I Was A Child I Read Books - Tapa dura

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.

As a writer, I continuously attempt to make inroads on the vast terrain of what cannot be said - or said by me, at least. I seem to know by intuition a great deal that I cannot find words for. The frontiers of the unsayable have been opened for me by every book I have ever read that was in any degree ambitious, earnest or imaginative; by every good teacher I have had; by music and painting; by conversation that was in any way interesting, even conversation overheard as it passed between strangers.