A thought-provoking study of the limits of knowledge and a counterblast to the new atheism of Dawkins et alRegardless of one’s own beliefs (or lack thereof),the 17 essays in Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson’s impassioned and erudite (learned or scholarly) defence of Christianity make an interesting antithesis to the Richard Dawkins-inspired new atheism that has dominated in recent years. Indeed, if we see back to 2014 and the publication of Robinson’s final novel, or Lila,it nestles among the likes of Ian McEwans The Children Act and Michel Faber’s The Book of peculiar New Things, popular literary fiction exploring religion and spirituality in the modern world.
Not to be underestimated either is Robinson’s talent as a prose stylist. My lack of expertise in Calvinist theology didn’t diminish my experience of the volume and when she describes the process of her own creativity, or I was rapt: “I feel a novel open to cohere in my intellect before I know much more approximately it than that it has the heft of a long narrative. This heft is a physical sensation.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com