Where to start with Marilynne Robinson

American novelist, born 1943. Won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005 and the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2009.

Best Marilynne Robinson book to start with: Gilead (2004), on 5 of the 15 lists it could have made.

Gilead, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005, is the place to start. An elderly minister in a small Iowa town writes a long letter to his young son, and the book is quiet, slow and full of small, exact observations. You can read it in a few days, and it rewards patience.

Housekeeping was her first novel, shortlisted for the Pulitzer in 1982. Two sisters are raised by a series of relatives in an Idaho town beside a lake, and the writing is dense and lyrical. It is the one to read if you want a stranger book.

Home won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2009 and was shortlisted for the National Book Award in 2008. Lila was shortlisted for the National Book Award in 2014. Both are set in the same Iowa town as Gilead and overlap with it, so they make more sense after it. Home sees a family from another house on the street, and Lila tells the story of the minister’s wife.