The knowledge of good. That half of the primal catastrophe received too little attention. Guilt and grace met together in the phrase despite all that. He could think of himself as a thief sneaking off with an inestimable wealth of meaning and trust, all of it offended and damaged beyond use, except to remind him of the nature of the crime. Or he could consider the sweet marriage that made her a conspirator with him in it, the loyalty that always restored them both, just like grace.
ALSO BY MARILYNNE ROBINSON
FICTION
Housekeeping
Gilead
Home
Lila
NONFICTION
Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State and Nuclear Pollution
The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought
Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self
When I Was a Child I Read Books
The Givenness of Things
What Are We Doing Here?
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marilynne Robinson is the author of Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Home (2008), winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Lila (2014), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her first novel, Housekeeping (1980), won the PEN/Hemingway Award. Robinson’s nonfiction books include The Givenness of Things (2015), When I Was a Child I Read Books (2012), Absence of Mind (2010), The Death of Adam (1998), and Mother Country (1989). She is the recipient of a 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, for “her grace and intelligence in writing.” Marilynne Robinson lives in Iowa City, Iowa. You can sign up for email updates here.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Begin Reading
A Note About the Author
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
120 Broadway, New York 10271
Copyright © 2020 by Marilynne Robinson
All rights reserved
First edition, 2020
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following material:
Lyrics from “I Wish I Didn’t Love You So” © 1947 Sony/ATV Harmony. Sony/ATV Harmony. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, 424 Church Street, Nashville, TN 37219. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Excerpt from “Acquainted with the Night,” by Robert Frost, from the book The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright © 1928, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company.
Copyright © 1956 by Robert Frost. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved.
E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-71965-4
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.
www.fsgbooks.com
www.twitter.com/fsgbooks • www.facebook.com/fsgbooks