What is Roxana Robinson reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Roxana Robinson, author of Sparta.

Her entry begins:

I’m reading Among Murderers, by Sabine Heinlein, an odd and compelling book about prisoners who have been released from long-term jail sentences and are starting to negotiate the world outside. Heinlen is a perceptive and intrepid observer, and follows three murderers over a period of two years. Murder is the dark place, the black hole, the act that...[read on]

About Sparta, from the publisher:

Going from peace to war can make a young man into a warrior. Going from war to peace can destroy him.

Conrad Farrell has no family military heritage, but as a classics major at Williams College, he has encountered the powerful appeal of the Marine Corps ethic. “Semper Fidelis” comes straight from the ancient world, from Sparta, where every citizen doubled as a full-time soldier. When Conrad graduates, he joins the Marines to continue a long tradition of honor, courage, and commitment.

As Roxana Robinson’s new novel, Sparta, begins, Conrad has just returned home to Katonah, New York, after four years in Iraq, and he’s beginning to learn that something has changed in his landscape. Something has gone wrong, though things should be fine: he hasn’t been shot or wounded; he’s never had psychological troubles. But as he attempts to reconnect with his family and his girlfriend and to find his footing in the civilian world, he learns how hard it is to return to the people and places he used to love. His life becomes increasingly difficult to negotiate: he can’t imagine his future, can’t recover his past, and can’t bring himself to occupy his present. As weeks turn into months, Conrad feels himself trapped in a life that’s constrictive and incomprehensible, and he fears that his growing rage will have irreparable consequences.

Suspenseful, compassionate, and perceptive, Sparta captures the nuances of the unique estrangement that modern soldiers face as they attempt to rejoin the society they’ve fought for. Billy Collins writes that Roxana Robinson is “a master at . . . the work of excavating the truths about ourselves”; The Washington Post’s Jonathan Yardley calls her “one of our best writers.” In Sparta, with the powerful insight and acuity that marked her earlier books (Cost, Sweetwater, and A Perfect Stranger, among others), Robinson delivers her best book yet.

Learn more about the book and author at Roxana Robinson’s website.

Robinson is the author of the four previous novels: Cost (2008), Sweetwater (2003), This Is My Daughter (1998), and Summer Light (1988); the three short-story collections A Perfect Stranger and Other Stories (2005), Asking for Love (1996), and A Glimpse of Scarlet and Other Stories (1991); and the biography Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life (1989). Four of these were named Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times.

The Page 69 Test: Cost.

My Book, The Movie: Cost.

The Page 69 Test: Sparta.

Writers Read: Roxana Robinson.

--Marshal Zeringue