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A Masterpiece Nearly 25 years after HOUSEKEEPING Marilynne Robinson returns triumphantly with another instant classic. Did I say instant? A book like this is such a considerable achievement I have little doubt that Robinson has been working on it steadily and intently for more than two decades, and in any case a book as rich with thoughtfully meditative reflections and exactingly written prose could hardly be described as anything other than deliberative and beautifully, painstakingly wrought. John Ames is an old man who has spent his life preaching in the prairie flats of Iowa. He decides to explain himself to the young son he has been blessed with late in life, and in so doing explains the very nature of fatherhood, of filial devotion, of the mysteries of life, to the reader. How uncannily this white contemporary woman has managed to imagine her way into the head of an elderly man from long ago! It is a tale of hardbitten living, of abolitionism, of pacifism, of faith and patience, of America and of our time.