In 1980, when she was in her late thirties, Marilynne Robinson published her first novel, Housekeeping. Her way of seeing things seemed to have sprung from nowhere and was like no one else's. The novel won awards, high praise from critics, and the devotion of readers, and it has not been forgotten: its fame has spread in a slow aftershock, passed on by word of mouth, cropping up on lists of the best contemporary novels. In the first few pages a train runs off a bridge into a lake in the middle of the night, and that is something like the experience of reading Housekeeping: a startling plunge into a language of icy sensuality and mysterious depths, where the world is reflected upside down.

LRB 21 April 2005 | PDF Download