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Essays
New essays on theological, political, and contemporary themes, by the Pulitzer Prize winner.
Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and Tocqueville inform our political consciousness or discussing the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson's peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display.
What Are We Doing Here? is a call for Americans to continue the tradition of those great thinkers and to remake American political and cultural life as "deeply impressed by obligation [and as] a great theater of heroic generosity, which, despite all, is sometimes palpable still."
To what audience would you recommend Won’t Be Long Now? Is there another book or author you feel has a similar theme or style?
I think a more mature audience would appreciate the perspective. Readers who appreciate introspective, character-driven novels—especially those exploring grief, neurodivergence, and emotional isolation. It has a similar quiet intensity to authors like Marilynne Robinson or Elizabeth Strout.
-Kristine_A
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (12/25/2025)
I finished The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. It was the first book of hers that I've read and I'm not sure if I'll read any more. I'm currently reading Zorrie by Laird Hunt. It was a 2021 National Book Award Finalist and I can definitely understand why. There is such a quiet beauty ...
-Lana_Maskus
What’s your favorite epistolary novel?
For me, it's three, all very different from each other: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (lyrical, quiet, beautiful) The All-True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (caustic, raunchy, irreverent, and laugh out loud funny) Griffin & Sabine by Nick Bantock (unusual, multimedia, hands on)
-Lana_Maskus
What books have you enjoyed so far in 2025, what books are you looking forward to reading?
Books I've enjoyed so far in 2025 are as follows: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese The Magic Kingdom by Russell Banks Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt Evidence of Things Unseen by Marianne Wiggins Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent...
-Thomas_Maurino
What's your favorite book series?
When you ask which series is our "favorite," that is like asking which child is our favorite! Multiple answers are a must. Apologies in advance for the very long-winded answer. I do love series! The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldon The Cousins' War Series (The War of the Roses), by Philippa Gr...
-Cathryn_Conroy
"An essay or two rambles too much - "Untitled" is aptly named - but Robinson's overall trajectory is clear and important. Her eloquent work stands up for a compassionate faith, the value of education, and a sense of decency." - Publishers Weekly
"Sharp, elegant cultural analysis." - Kirkus
"Addressing our current political climate, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award winner Robinson, not unexpectedly, does so by considering how writers such as Emerson and Tocqueville have shaped our political thought, encouraging us to continue their tradition and play a role in "a great theater of heroic generosity, which, despite all, is sometimes palpable still." - Library Journal
This information about What Are We Doing Here? was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Alec Soth / Magnum Photos
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; Lila (2014), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Jack (2020), a New York Times bestseller. 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." Robinson lives in California.
If you liked What Are We Doing Here?, try these:
by Jon Mooallem
Published 2022
From the discovery of the author's face in a century-old photograph to a triple-amputee hospice director working at the border of life and death, here are thirteen hopeful, heartbreaking, and profound essays from "one of the most intelligent, compassionate, and curious authors working today" (Elizabeth Gilbert).
by Marilynne Robinson
Published 2021
Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, returns to the world of Gilead with Jack, the latest novel in one of the great works of contemporary American fiction.
by Joy Williams
Published 2018
From "quite possibly America's best living writer of short stories" (NPR), Ninety-Nine Stories of God finds Joy Williams reeling between the sublime and the surreal, knocking down the barriers between the workaday and the divine.
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